Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller)

by Todd Borg

  “You’re holding some cards that Bob wouldn’t want you to play,” Diamond said.

  “They might lead to his arrest on murder charges.”

  “Sounds like a good hand. Property address?”

  “I don’t know. I came by sea. It’s the first set of lake shore houses north of Cave Rock. The one you want is a modern arrangement of box shapes that step up and back.”

  “And you’re currently on his boat.”

  “Enjoying his single malt Scotch and his jazz,” I said.

  “Taking a man’s Scotch is a serious transgression some places.”

  “This is probably one of them.”

  I heard the sound of fast footsteps coming down the dock.

  “Someone coming, gotta go,” I said and hung up.

  The footsteps stopped. There was a faint sound of a key sliding slowly into the boathouse door lock. I wasn’t certain, but I may have heard a door open. Then came silence. The person who came through the door was being stealthy, worried about being tripped up by a burglar.

  I called out in a loud voice, “No need to sneak up on me. Owen McKenna here, topside, on the settee in the lounge. No weapon, no threat. Enjoying your booze. Come and join me.”

  More silence. Tommy Flanagan had moved to a syncopated, uptempo number. Between the chords, I heard a creak of dock boards, felt the faintest of boat motion as if someone of size had come aboard on tiptoes. Movement on the port side aft stairway. I turned and saw the round eye of a gun barrel rise up above the stairway. The gun was followed by a large man dressed in jeans and blue sweatshirt with the logo of a local bar on it.

  “Hands in the air,” he said.

  I raised my hands, looking up to make sure that I didn’t spill the precious Scotch.

  “Now stand.”

  I stood.

  “Turn and put your hands on the bar rail, legs spread.”

  “I’ll have to set down the Scotch,” I said. I set the glass onto the bar, then assumed the position. In my side vision, I saw him approach. His gun looked to be a Beretta 92A1. Seventeen 9mm rounds in the magazine. Bob’s guys didn’t fool around.

  He came up behind, patted me down, pulled out my wallet.

  “Sit,” he said.

  I sat and watched the man.

  He was a big guy, around 30 years old, not my height, but wider and heavier just as Simone had described Ned’s night visitor. He was classic ugly, bad skin, bulbous, pock-marked nose, big hair brushed back and down and held in place at the back of his head by a thick layer of goo. Small eyes set way back. Heavy brow, receding chin. His left hand was bandaged. Perhaps the source of the blood on the tender bay, perhaps cut by one of Ned’s fancy Veitsi Mies throwing knives. The thought gave me a small shot of empathy for this guy. Maybe he was Ned’s spymaster. Or maybe Bob was Ned’s spymaster, and this guy was just the courier bringing money and marching orders. Either way, he was the physical opposite of handsome Ned. When the ugly guy gets cut and the beautiful guy is unscathed, it reinforces my There’s-No-Justice view of the world.

  But Ned telegraphed feral smart, which equals stupid in the land of humans. This guy telegraphed real smart. In my experience, it was better to be real smart than pretty any day.

  The man glanced at the companionway and backed away from the opening. No doubt wondering if I had backup lurking in the bowels of the ship. He kept the Beretta on me while he used his left hand to flip open my wallet. He looked at my licenses, then pulled out his phone and dialed.

  “Got one Owen McKenna, private dick, drinking your Scotch.” Pause. “Okay.”

  He put the phone back in his pocket.

  “Private dick?” I said. “You time travel from Al Capone’s gang?”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  He was focused. His attention never wandered. I had a momentary thought of trying to distract him and then disarm him, but it did not seem like a reasonable idea. Besides which, having a gun trained on me gave me the kind of moral authority we attach to the underdog.

  We looked at each other. I smiled. He scowled.

  In a couple of minutes another man came up the starboard aft stairway. He had a large Greyhound on a leash. The dog was a beautiful tan and, like many Greyhounds, appeared to have little interest in people. It ignored all of us, looking instead, no doubt, for smallish animals to chase and eat.

  “Bob,” I said. “You’re a hard man to track down.”

  He was a mid-fifties, business-executive cliché with thin-soled Italian loafers, high thread-count gray slacks, light gray V-neck sweater over gray shirt, and matching gray hair. He was thin like his dog.

  “Who are you, and why are you on my boat?” he said in a soft voice. Too soft. Like a threat.

  “Owen McKenna, working for Joe Rorvik, looking into the probable assault of his wife Cynthia Rorvik. One of the suspects is Ned Cavett, a wife-abusing dirtball whom you have hired to...”

  I was interrupted by the sound of the boathouse door opening and closing.

  The ugly man stepped behind me, put the gun to the back of my neck, and pressed the cold barrel against my skin.

  “No movement, no talk,” he whispered in my ear.

  His angle was such that his gun would be pointing toward any person coming onto the boat. He could shoot me, or he could shoot the intruder by shifting his gun a few inches to my side. Or, aiming through my neck carefully, he could shoot us both with one bullet.

  Diamond appeared, coming up the starboard stairway. He was wearing his uniform and his equipment, but his sidearm was snapped into its holster, and his hand was nowhere near. It was classic Diamond, casual, confident, relaxed. Although he obviously knew that I was there, and he must have deduced that the man behind me had a gun, he didn’t even glance our way.

  “You must be Bob,” he said. “I’m Sergeant Martinez, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.” He reached out his hand.

  Bob seemed both surprised and wary. He shook Diamond’s hand.

  “I understand that you have an intruder on your boat,” Diamond said.

  “Yes. I want you to arrest that man.” Bob turned and pointed at me.

  “I know McKenna,” Diamond said. “He might be a pest, but he’s not dangerous. Tell your man to put his weapon away.”

  Bob hesitated. He looked Diamond over as if trying to gauge the chances that Diamond had stolen the uniform and was impersonating an officer.

  “Put it away, Benjamin,” Bob said.

  Benjamin stepped away from me, holding the gun down. He decocked it, which is always an adrenaline boost when you realize that the guy with a gun on you really did have a round in the chamber. Benjamin reached behind his back and put the gun into his concealed-carry holster at the small of his back.

  Bob said to Diamond, “How did you know McKenna had broken into my boat?”

  “He called and told me. Let’s talk,” Diamond said. He walked over and sat on the settee opposite me. He gestured at Bob and Benjamin.

  Benjamin watched Bob. Bob walked over and sat down. His dog lay down next to him. Bob looked at Benjamin and pointed at the settee next to him. Benjamin sat down.

  I looked at Diamond as I pointed at Benjamin. “The man’s hand wound looks serious. Do you think that could have been one of the knives that Veitsi Mies gave Ned?” I saw Bob shoot a look of surprise toward Benjamin.

  Diamond nodded. “Ol’ Ned hangs with Veitsi and the Canyon Brotherhood. If the Brotherhood found out that Neddy had a disagreement with Ben, that could be serious. Story like that could be expanded into a rumor of something more serious. Like maybe Ned went down at the hands of Bob’s enforcer.”

  Diamond turned to Bob. “All the law enforcement in Tahoe wouldn’t be David against Goliath if the Canyon Brotherhood came to town to exact vengeance for what they think is a fallen brother. It wouldn’t matter whether or not Joe votes for the Steven’s Peak Resort if the Canyon crew takes out Ben and you. I don’t know for sure, Bob, but it looks like you’ve maybe got some problems coming from mul
tiple directions. Not sure if arresting this McKenna guy is going to improve things.”

  “Why are you here?” Bob said.

  “First things first,” I said. “What is your last name?”

  Bob hesitated, thinking over how he should respond and whether he needed to respond.

  “Hinton.”

  “And Benjamin?”

  “Prattel.”

  “And your dog is Pretty Girl.”

  More surprise in his eyes. “What’s my dog got to do with it?” he asked, suspicious, like I was playing with him.

  “Polite conversation,” I said. “Dog’s part of the group. Maybe I want to say something to her.”

  Bob made a little head shake like he thought I was ridiculous.

  Unlike Spot, Pretty Girl didn’t turn at the sound of her name.

  “Good. Now that we all know each other, we can talk about why I came to chat with you. Your man Benjamin Prattel, here, has been paying Ned Cavett by bringing late-night cash drops to Ned’s house. Since then, Ned has been seen spying on Joe Rorvik’s house. Joe’s wife has been assaulted and is near death in a Reno hospital. Joe’s best friend Manuel Romero is dead. Jillian Oleska is dead. All three were against your proposed resort development.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Jillian worked for me. She was a tireless proponent of the Steven’s Peak Resort.”

  “A tireless proponent who, according to Mrs. Rorvik, was having second thoughts about it. And, like Mrs. Rorvik and Romero, she was in a position to influence Joe’s vote.”

  “I don’t believe that for a moment.”

  “I don’t expect you to. But there it is.”

  “You can’t prove anything,” Bob said.

  “Not yet. But I won’t need much more evidence than I already have to put you in the electric chair. Separate from that, I don’t need to prove anything to kill your resort. If I suggest to Joe that the assault on his wife may be traceable to you, he’ll vote against your project.”

  Bob did a good job of hiding his discomfort, but it showed in the tensing of his legs, the clenching of his toes, visible through the thin leather of his expensive shoes. He glanced at my glass of Scotch, then swallowed.

  “RKS Properties is a large, serious business,” he said. “Like any business, we occasionally hire lobbyists to look after our interests.”

  “You’re claiming that Ned Cavett is a lobbyist?” I said, trying not to sound too scornful.

  “Joe Rorvik’s vote is important. So we looked at his associates. Mrs. Rorvik was spending an inordinate amount of time with a young French girl. We realized that her boyfriend had, in a manner of speaking, access to Joe Rorvik.”

  “So you hired the idiot dirtball to represent the interests of RKS Properties. Brilliant business decision.” This time I couldn’t hide my scorn.

  “Cavett didn’t present himself badly at first. In retrospect, perhaps he wasn’t the best choice. I admit that. But we committed no crime. We simply put him on a bi-weekly retainer and gave him the goal of increasing the pro-resort influences on Mr. Rorvik and reducing the anti-resort influences. Benjamin provided Cavett with a detailed plan of how this would be accomplished. It was straightforward. There was no reason for Mr. Cavett to become...” Bob hesitated.

  “A wild card,” I said.

  “Yes, I suppose that word would apply.”

  “In addition to the retainer, did you offer a bonus if the result was successful?”

  Bob swallowed again. I could see that he was considering the implications of telling the truth versus obfuscating it. “We told Mr. Cavett that he would be paid ten thousand dollars if Mr. Rorvik voted for the development. That is standard procedure with lobbyists, only a much smaller payout than is traditional in these situations.”

  “Like putting a gerbil in front of a greyhound,” I said. “Smaller than a bunny rabbit, but it produces the same prey drive.”

  Bob looked over at Pretty Girl. She appeared indifferent.

  I stood up. “I might be calling you for more information. I’ll need your number.”

  “I don’t give out my private number.”

  “Which is why I had to break in here.”

  Bob thought about it. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a card, and handed it to me. “I’ve done nothing wrong, committed no crime.”

  “Right,” I said. “You are a paragon of moral fiber.”

  Diamond stood up. He and I walked down the starboard aft stairway to the tender deck, and left.

  “A paragon of moral fiber?” Diamond said as we headed up Bob Hinton’s lawn.

  “New phrase I learned. Sounded pretty good, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Diamond said.

  “Bob knew we were bullshitting him about the Canyon Brotherhood,” I said as we got into Diamond’s patrol unit.

  “Yeah. But he also knew that we’re onto Benjamin bringing Ned cash. He’s smart enough to understand how that would look to a jury.”

  “You think there’s any possibility that they hired Ned to take out Rell and Manuel and Jillian?” I asked.

  “If he knew that Jillian was rooting for the other team, maybe that would be enough to send Ned after her. So, yeah, the possibility exists. More likely that Ned got the brilliant idea himself, though. Probably thought it was a great way to earn the ten thousand bonus.”

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  Diamond drove me back to Jennifer’s mausoleum, where I picked up Street and Spot.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  That night Street had one of her stress dreams. They are infrequent, but when they happen, the pattern is regular. She whimpers while she turns back and forth. She grabs the sheets and twists them into knots, and she attempts a mangled, strangled cry of fear.

  Long ago, I learned that my impulse to wake and comfort her is not always the right thing to do, because the interruption causes her dream to stay with her for hours or even days.

  When the next nightmare struck, I sat on my hands and gritted my teeth and winced at every sound she made. In time, the dream passed, and she settled back into a calm sleep. The next morning, she awoke in a cheerful mood and betrayed no hint of the stress from the middle of the night.

  So when she started up the bad sequence this night, I clenched my jaw, made my hands into fists, and waited it out.

  When morning came, she was not cheerful.

  “You seem in a dark mood,” I said. “Anything I can help with?”

  “No, thanks. I just had a bad dream.”

  “Are you okay now?” I asked.

  “I’ll be fine. It’s just that certain childhood memories sometimes come back. I guess you never completely put these things to rest.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. “Simone’s situation reminds you of your brother.”

  Street looked at me and nodded. The pain in her eyes was obvious. “I’m plagued by the if-onlys. If only my brother had been gone that night my dad came home late. If only my dad had just beat on me instead of my younger brother. If only my brother had run out the door the moment he saw that my dad was in a black mood. If only my dad had been one of those no-show dads. We’d have been infinitely better off if we’d never had a dad at all. The memory of my brother still hurts a great deal.”

  Street had never spoken much about it. I think she wanted me not to attach such dark thoughts to her.

  “You once told me that the talk therapy helped,” I said.

  She shrugged. “You spend enough hours talking to a shrink, it helps, yes. But I found the promise of therapy to be overblown. Speaking for myself, no amount of talking can make the wounds heal beyond raw scars. And some therapists made it worse. The one who said I needed to forgive my dad in order to find comfort was the worst. His arrogance still burns. Maybe others can forgive. But the beating-death murder of your own son is an evil that I can never forgive. I can understand showing mercy to him, not wanting him to die with pain. I believe in the notion of getting on with life, of accepting that evil things happen, that justice fai
ls us in those moments. But to pardon the perpetrator? To cease to feel resentment for the murder of my brother? Not possible. He took the life of an innocent boy, and he did it with malice and viciousness. I will resent it always.”

  “And Ned is doing a similar thing with Simone,” I said.

  “Yeah. And with many of these men, it never ends. I think that’s what terrifies me about Simone. She’s going to die by that man’s hands. I can tell. It might not happen for some time, but the pattern is clear. He hates the world, and he channels that hate into Simone.”

  “I’ve tried to get her to leave him,” I said, “but she won’t hear of it. She says she’ll be dead the moment she tries to leave. It sounds like Rell Rorvik also tried to convince her to leave. From what Joe Rorvik told me, the South Lake Tahoe Police offered to help find Simone a safe house. I haven’t spoken to Mallory about it, but I know he would help. The women’s center is very active and offers the exact kind of support that she needs. But Simone still has to decide to try. Unfortunately, she believes that any move in that direction will write her death sentence. And there are uncountable examples of domestic violence deaths that suggest the truth of her fear.”

  “If she did decide to leave him and press charges,” Street said, “what do you think her chances would be?”

  “Hard to say. I would try to stay in contact with her and be a liaison between her and the police. I could help see her through the turmoil and stress during Ned’s prosecution. But it all gets down to her resolve. It takes a great deal of staying power for abuse victims to live in hiding and not communicate with anyone who could inadvertently reveal their location. Just testifying at the trial is too much for many, knowing that their abuser is flashing them the look that means he’s going to kill them the first chance he gets. In the case of Ned, he’s a particularly powerful and evil abuser. Having spent time in prison, he’s likely to think that if he has to go back inside, he may as well kill her first. A good lawyer can often get such a person out on bail. All Ned would need to do is track her down before he’s convicted and locked up.”