Tahoe Hijack

by Todd Borg

  “Which was what?” I asked.

  “Over-the-top, wired, intense psychopath.”

  “How did Davy get the money to hire Nick and buy expensive weapons and other gear from you? Even with steep monthly dues, it still wouldn’t add up to much.”

  “The Red Blood Patriots is just a side gig. He’s passionate about it, runs it like a cult church, but it’s still only a hobby. Davy’s main business…” Watson paused.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Davy makes his money running a meth lab. He’s real smart about it. Instead of selling to individual addicts, each of whom are a security risk, he developed a single big customer, a biker gang in Arizona. He’s a pro and they’re pros. None of the principals do drugs. It’s all about the money. They send a courier to pick up the product every month. Payment is by electronic transfer.”

  “And the lab is at the Red Blood Patriots compound?”

  “Yes. It would seem counter-intuitive because if anybody were to look into Davy’s activities, they would obviously focus on the compound. Maybe they’d find some illegal guns, but they won’t find drugs.”

  “Why not?”

  “The lab is well-hidden. None of the Patriots’ members even know it exists.”

  “You learned this from Nick?”

  “Yeah. Davy took him into his confidence. Probably was dying to brag to someone after all these years. Davy disguised some of the details, but Nick was smart enough to put together the real story. And it’s a beaut.

  “Years ago,” Watson continued, “Davy bought one of those heavy metal storage containers like they use to ship freight on ships. He had the delivery people put it behind a cabin he had there on his big parcel of land. He rigged it with lights and such, and it made a nice shop. This was all before he started the Patriots. Eventually, Davy wanted to trade up to a bigger shop. So he bought a kit for a large pole building and put it up himself.

  “Davy did all his own excavation work. Rented a front end loader with the backhoe on the rear, the cement mixer, the works. He’d done some construction work in years past, and he was so good with that tractor and the concrete block foundation that he was able to build a retaining wall into the big hill that rises up on the back side of his property. The retaining wall became the back wall of the pole building. The result left enough space on the front side of the pole building that he could put in a nice little patio between the pole building and the cabin. It was complete with a fire pit and some raised-bed gardens, and a loggia above.

  “From what Nick understood, Davy did all the work himself, and the area can’t be seen from any nearby property. So the only people who could have ever seen what was going on were the few Mexican laborers he brought in to help with some of the grunt work.

  “Anyway, probably no one noticed that the metal storage container that had been there for years was suddenly gone one morning.

  “Turns out that during a long night of excavation work, Davy embedded that storage container deep into the hill behind the cabin, backfilled around it, and then built the retaining wall in front of it. He even prettied up the area with some landscaping. Apparently, you go into the pole building and there’s an honest-to-God secret door in the back wall.”

  “And behind that is the meth lab,” I said.

  “Right. Hidden like a cave. With lighting and a serious ventilation system.”

  “Does Davy do the lab work himself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does he have a cover story? What do people think he does for a living?”

  “More genius. Davy owns a rundown garage where he has an auto repair business. He also has a dimwit brother who helps run it and does some legitimate work like changing oil filters and such. But what Davy’s brother is really good at is telling the story that Davy planted in his brain. And the story is that Davy was a guru of sorts for Harley Davidson stock investing.”

  It fit exactly with what Harmon had told me the day before. “Everyone who wants to know about Davy would eventually speak to the brother and be told the story that Davy basically retired on his investments,” I said. “Providing perfect cover for running drugs.”

  Watson nodded.

  “And Nick told you all of this.”

  “Like I said, Nick was a talker. He was also very good at learning things about people. And I’m a good listener. Being a good listener means knowing how to keep a person talking.”

  “Nick pass on anything else about Davy Halstead?”

  “Nothing important. Just stuff like Davy Halstead’s wife is a lonely woman who is so reticent she may as well be mute. And Davy’s mistress talks about his impotence problem and how they fight. Everything else I heard is even less significant.”

  “Tell me about Grace.”

  “I learned of Grace from Nick. Davy learned about Grace from Nick. All three of us, Nick, Davy, and I, have attempted to make something out of what we learned. All of us have failed.”

  Watson took a deep breath, held it like it was a yoga exercise, then let it out.

  “Nick had amazing perceptual abilities. He could meet a person, talk to them for less than a minute and know their background, their financial situation, their hopes and dreams and fears and worries.”

  “And he met Grace?”

  “Not in the introduction sense. But he saw her at an author signing. He’d gotten season tickets to a lecture series at Berkeley. He said he was simply interested in hearing the authors speak. But I assume that he really went as a hunter/predator, looking to study the well-to-do crowd that attends such events. The truth was probably both. One of the authors had written a book on the role of the Chinese immigrant laborers in the Gold Rush. After the talk, Nick got in line to buy his book. There was a woman in front of him. When she got up to the author’s table, she asked the man several questions about whether he’d ever heard of Chinese laborers striking it rich in the gold country.”

  “Which piqued Nick’s curiosity,” I said.

  “Yes. So he watched and listened as she asked the author to sign the book to Grace Sun.”

  “Do you know the name of the author?”

  “No idea. After that, Nick went home and began researching Grace Sun. He discovered a website about Gold Rush history where Grace had posted several times on a discussion thread about Chinese miners. In one of her postings, Grace said that she had a distant grandfather who had come from China. In another, she wrote about a journal that her ancestor had written in Mandarin and how much of it was damaged and too blurred to read. But the tone of her post was to suggest that the journal possibly hinted of finding gold.

  “From that, Nick put together a scenario that basically said, what if Grace Sun had reason to suspect that her ancestor got rich in the Gold Rush and, if so, what if there was money or gold that was lost or deliberately hidden. Could the gold be found? Could the journal be examined by experts? Were there clues that Grace would never figure out but that might make sense to Nick?”

  “Or to you,” I said. “You kept quiet all along about Grace’s potential treasure because you hoped that you could one day figure out what and where it was. And then you could retrieve it for yourself.”

  “Yes, I admit it. I wondered about it. too. So when Nick told me about it, I engineered my own little plan. I found out where Grace lived and followed her now and then. She often went to the San Francisco Library. Sometimes I was able to watch from a distance as she found books in the stacks and took them to a table to read. I made walk-bys and spied the titles and authors. I watched as she re-shelved the books. Once I saw her put a pink Post-it in a book to mark a page, and when I later pulled the book off the shelf, the Post-it was still there, and I could see what she’d been reading. After several visits, it was obvious from the books she investigated that she believed her ancestor had stashed away something very valuable. One of the books she’d looked at was even called Hidden Treasure: How To Find And Retrieve Fortunes That Have Been Lost To Time.”

  Watson rubbed his face as
if he’d just awakened and was checking his beard to see how badly it needed shaving.

  “It was after that that I talked to the librarian about Chinese history, and she told me about the woman who had been in researching the same thing. Of course, it was Grace Sun, the person I’d been spying on for a long time. I was so confidant that she’d never seen me that I met her and shook her hand, just like I told you before.”

  “Just because she believed that there was money,” I said, “didn’t mean it exists.”

  “Of course not. Not only might it not exist, it probably doesn’t exist. And even if it does exist, it will most likely never be found.”

  “Yet you still pursued the idea, hoping to take for yourself something that rightfully would have belonged to Grace.”

  Watson looked down at the floor. “I’m as wicked as the next guy. But I didn’t kill her. I have never personally, physically hurt anyone.”

  “You think Nick O’Connell killed her?” I asked.

  “Good a guess as any. From what I read in the paper, nothing valuable was taken from her apartment even though the place was turned upside down. It sounded like someone was looking for something and didn’t find it. My guess is that Grace’s killer was Nick, and that she surprised him while he was looking for the journal she mentioned on the website posting.”

  “When we found the body,” I said, “there was a journal tucked inside of Grace’s shirt.”

  Thomas Watson made a single, intense jerk of his head as if someone had put electrodes under each ear and given him a high-voltage shock. It took him a moment to recover.

  “Was the journal in Chinese?” he finally asked, his eyes wide even as he frowned.

  “Mandarin, yes.”

  “What was in it? Although I suppose you won’t tell me.”

  “Most of the characters were blurred as though the journal had been dropped in a mud puddle. We can make out almost nothing from it.”

  Watson’s eyelids tensed and lowered as if he was scheming. “After all this time,” he mumbled in a low voice, “it turns out to be true. I never really believed it.”

  “Does Davy Halstead know about the possible treasure,” I asked, still using his name in the present tense.

  Watson nodded. “He talked to us about it one night when I delivered the last of his order, some helmets, if I remember correctly. We celebrated our business with a late-night cognac. I was surprised because both Nick and Davy seemed like beer guys. Of course, I knew something of cognac from my international travels. So when Davy brought out three large snifters and a bottle of Courvoisier, I experienced one of those little seismic shifts. I realized that I had underestimated Davy.”

  “Courvoisier being superior to beer,” I said.

  “Of course,” Watson said, completely missing my sarcasm. “So we hung out at the bunkhouse on Davy’s compound and had a little party, and Nick showed us knife tricks, and we discussed Grace’s mythic fortune, waiting out there somewhere for us to discover and claim as long-lost treasure that would belong to the finder.”

  “Was anybody else around who might have overheard you three talking?”

  “No. The entire compound was empty. Davy is careful that way. Nick was sort of his confidant. And I was his supplier. He didn’t want the rest of the boys to mix it up with us. He was like a corporate manager. You don’t have drinks after work with the mail-room crew.”

  “When I first came and talked to you, you were willing to say that the hijacker was Nick, but you weren’t willing to mention Grace’s possible treasure. Why?”

  “Because I didn’t fully believe that I was in jail for the long term. It’s like having a valuable secret in addition to some contraband when your parents catch you doing something bad. You only volunteer to show them what’s in your pockets, what they can find out by themselves. You keep the secret to yourself.”

  “You told me about Grace’s daughter. Did you also tell Nick and Davy?”

  “Yeah. My tongue can be loosened by drink as well as the next person’s. I shouldn’t have. It didn’t occur to me that she might be valuable. Although maybe she knows nothing. Not that it would make a difference. Later, Nick said that he almost got her once. But he and Davy have both tried to find her since then, and couldn’t.”

  “What about Grace’s cousin Melody?”

  “Was she Grace’s roommate?”

  I nodded.

  “For some reason, I never paid her much attention. After following Grace for a few weeks, it seemed clear that the other woman was just a roommate. If she had been important, I would have expected to see Grace and her going to the local coffee shop, or shopping together, or simply staying in together at night. But Grace was often alone in the evening while her roommate went out.” Watson stared off at a vague distant place as if visualizing a memory.

  “You’re remembering something.”

  “Just that the roommate – or Grace’s cousin as you say – unlike Grace, she was quite an attractive woman, and she went out with several different men during the short time that I observed them. I got the feeling that the roommate was not so interested in finding a long-term partner as she was interested in simply having a man on her arm. Where Grace seemed thoughtful and discriminating and, maybe, a bit melancholy, the roommate seemed happy and smiley and shallow. I was more drawn to Grace. She reminded me of the line in that song about wanting the sadder but wiser girl.”

  “You never saw or met the daughter?”

  Watson shook his head. “Never would have known she existed but for the casual comment that Grace made.”

  I pulled out the photo of Nick and handed it to Watson.

  “Is that Nick O’Connell?”

  “I couldn’t say for certain what with all the hair and beard, but yes, it certainly looks like him.”

  “Are you saying that the hair and beard are a disguise?”

  Watson looked up at me with another look of tolerance for the mentally deficient. “Of course.”

  “Were Nick’s eyes intensely blue?” I asked.

  “They were blue. But I don’t know about intensely blue.”

  “One witness who saw him up close used that term.”

  “I suppose it would depend on the surrounding light. But I wouldn’t describe them as anything other than blue. Ordinary blue. Blue-gray. But I don’t recall if I ever saw him in bright sunlight. Maybe that’s the difference.”

  “Do you remember if Nick had the double-eight tattoo like the rest of the Red Blood Patriots?”

  “Sure. On his wrist. When I saw it, I was surprised. He didn’t seem the type to do that.”

  “When was the last time you saw Nick?”

  “About a year ago. I’d flown into Reno and was coming out of the airport’s baggage area. One of the Reno hotel shuttles was just driving away with a load of passengers. Nick yelled my name out the window and waved.”

  “So that places him near Tahoe, but not in the Tahoe Basin. When was the last time you spoke to Nick?”

  “Probably that night we drank Courvoisier with Davy. That would also be about a year ago.”

  “Do you know who Nick’s helper on the hijacking was?”

  “The man he dumped overboard? No. If I had to guess, I’d say it might have been a man named Kyle. He was a loner with a shifty quality. He watched Davy a little too closely. I didn’t trust him. Nick and Davy probably had a deal that was mutually beneficial. Nick gets some help on the hijacking, help without strings attached because the help was going to die. And Davy got rid of someone who was a problem. Maybe the guy learned something he shouldn’t have. Or maybe he’d made Davy look bad in front of the other guys. Or maybe he was disloyal.”

  “Davy would kill someone for those transgressions?”

  Watson looked at me like I was naïve. “Davy is one of the most amoral men I’ve ever met. Just like Nick in that way. He does what’s effective in getting what he wants. There is no right or wrong, only what’s pragmatic. He doesn’t even have a temper. He’s jus
t a businessman without a conscience.”

  “So he wouldn’t kill you for insulting him. But he’d kill you if your insult made his other men less likely to obey.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It sounds like Nick and Davy were in this together, trying to find the treasure before you could find it.”

  “I don’t think so. I think each played the other, tried to make the other think that they were allies in looking for the treasure all while each planned to double-cross the other and take the treasure for himself.”

  “As were you.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You obviously did well on your gun venture. You didn’t need any more money. Why such an effort to find this treasure?”

  “Just because it is treasure. Buried treasure. The allure has captivated people throughout history. It’s not about money or wealth. It’s about discovering the secret. Did Gan Sun find or create a treasure? Did his grandson Ming Sun stash it somewhere? The excitement of finding this possible bounty is much greater than its monetary value. Financial reward is of no account compared to the history-making excitement of prying open some treasure box to see what is inside.”

  “What is your take on why Nick hijacked the boat?” I said.

  “The only explanation that makes sense is that he wanted me out of the way. He thought I was close to finding the treasure, the treasure that probably is just a dream.”

  “Why didn’t he just kill you?”

  “I’m hard to kill. I’m careful where I go and how I run my affairs. Except for this little jail detour, I always carry. I’m even legal in California. And I have two bodyguards. So the only way for Nick to kill me would be to make the hit in public. In a grocery store or something. And that carries a large risk of being caught.” Watson paused. “So it makes sense that Nick planned all along for this.”