by Dave Stanton
EPILOUGUE
Early June, and I was keeping busy with a few routine jobs, a rash of shoplifting at a local supermarket, and a missing person case that resolved itself when an eighteen-year-old girl resurfaced after a week shacked up with a rock musician in a San Francisco hotel.
And, Candi had moved in.
We had just finished reorganizing a closet to accommodate her vast wardrobe (at least compared to mine), when my phone rang. It was Zak Pappas.
“I see you called me umpteen times,” he said.
“It took you a month to figure that out?”
“I’ve been in rehab,” he sighed. “No phone for thirty days.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that. Look, I was calling for a couple reasons. First, I wanted to ask you if the Hard Core United gang is still around.”
“Beats me. I haven’t heard from them, but I wouldn’t expect to.”
“All right. The other reason is I see Zeke’s is closed. Is that permanent?”
“Why would you care?”
“Because it was one of the best joints in town, at least until you shut down the kitchen.”
The line went quiet, and when he spoke, his voice was small with humility.
“Yeah, I screwed the pooch, okay? The shrinks tell me I wanted to get back at my old man for some shit from my childhood.”
“We’ve all got our baggage, Zak. What are your plans now?”
“I don’t know. I blew all my money, and my brother from Dallas footed the bill for my rehab. I figure I need at least twenty grand to reinstall the flooring I tore out for the mosh pit and get the dining room in shape.”
“That’s what you want to do? Restore Zeke’s Pit to how it was before?”
“I want to get my life back on track. If I had the money, I would.”
“Why not apply for a small business loan?”
“Dude, I was packing an eight-ball a day up my beak. I just about flushed my life down the crapper. No sane person would give me a loan.”
“Sanity was never one of my strengths.”
“What?”
“You know how to run the kitchen?”
“Hell, yes. I ran it for years. The beef brisket? That’s my recipe.”
“If I front you the money, are you confident you can make Zeke’s like it was before the death metal bullshit?”
“If I stay clean, and I will, you bet.”
“Then let’s meet there and shake on it.”
“Wow. You sure?”
“Why not?” I said. I needed a place to hide Jason Loohan’s cash from the IRS, and the restaurant had been thriving when Zak’s old man was alive. Maybe a partial ownership would even be a profitable thing over time. Sometimes you got to go with your gut. And my gut said that beef brisket was the best I’d ever had.
• • •
The first snow came early that fall. One day it was seventy and sunny and the next morning the sky was dark with clouds and by noon heavy flakes swirled down from the sky. Only one thing predictable about weather in the mountains—it’s unpredictable. When I drove to Zeke’s to work the bar for the lunch shift, two inches lay on the streets, and the pines were coated in white.
Candi came by after her last class and walked up to the bar, her high heels stepping on the peanut shells scattered over the wooden floor planks.
“Those shoes will never do for winter,” I said.
“Maybe I’ll just wear them in the bedroom, then.”
I made her a coffee drink and we sat at the table I liked, one I’d moved onto the stage next to the front window looking out over Highway 50. Cars crunched over the snow, chains rattling, headlights on, wipers trying to keep up with the steady fall from above. We watched in silence, cozy in the heat from the wood-burning stove in the corner.
“You know what?” I said. “Time to turn on the Christmas lights.”
“In October?”
I got up and hit the switches, and the bulbs laced around the trees outside came alive, the colors flashing and reflecting off the snow-covered ground.
“It’s just beautiful, isn’t it?” Candy said, her green eyes dancing in a kaleidoscope of red and blue. The jukebox kicked into Hank Williams Jr.’s “Family Tradition,” and the twang of the fiddle brought a smile to my face.
“Hey, look at this,” she said, handing me an alternative culture magazine she liked to read. “This reminds me of the guy you were describing.” Her fingernail tapped on a picture of four men standing on a canted bridge over a waterway.
“Swiss Metal Band Redefines Boundaries of Genre,” the caption read. I skimmed the short piece, until pausing at a comment on their drummer, a musician of “extraordinary talent and creativity” named Ernst VanHinkel.
Except the man in the picture was Rabbit Switton.
• • •
I never drew any conclusions as to the fate of the missing mobsters from Pistol Pete’s, other than a fair certainty they were dead. I also never gained any insight regarding the role of John Switton, other than to assume he had fled the country and was living incognito overseas. I did find out, though, that Salvatore Tuma’s New Jersey home had been raided by the Feds, and he was under incitement for a number of RICO charges.
As for my own life, I stay happy on a daily basis, and why the hell not? My house among the tall pines and granite faces is cheerful with a woman’s touch, and I’m thankful every day for that. Damn thankful, because change is as inevitable as the turning of the season. That evil might again invade my life I have little doubt, but I never invest myself in that thought. That keeps me sane I suppose, or as close as I’ll get.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1960, Dave Stanton moved to Northern California in 1961. He attended San Jose State University and received a BA in journalism in 1983. Over the years, he worked as a bartender, newspaper advertising salesman, furniture mover, pizza cook, debt collector, and technology salesman. He has two children, Austin and Haley. He and his wife, Heidi, live in San Jose, California.
Stanton is the author of five novels, all featuring private investigator Dan Reno and his ex-cop buddy, Cody Gibbons.
To learn more, visit the author’s website at
http://danrenonovels.com/
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More Dan Reno Novels:
STATELINE
Cancel the wedding–the groom is dead.
When a tycoon’s son is murdered the night before his wedding, the enraged and grief-stricken father offers investigator Dan Reno (that’s Reno, as in no problemo), a life-changing bounty to find the killer. Reno, nearly broke, figures he’s finally landed in the right place at the right time. It’s a nice thought, but when a band of crooked cops get involved, Reno finds himself not only earning every penny of his paycheck, but also fighting for his life.
Who committed the murder, and why? And what of the dark sexual deviations that keep surfacing? Haunted by his murdered father and a violent, hard drinking past, Reno wants no more blood on his hands. But a man’s got to make a living, and backing off is not in his DNA. Traversing the snowy alpine winter in the Sierras and the lonely deserts of Nevada, Reno must revert to his old ways to survive. Because the fat bounty won’t do him much good if he’s dead…
Dying for the Highlife
Jimmy Homestead’s glory days as a high school stud were a distant memory. His adulthood had amounted to little more than temporary jobs, cheap boarding houses, and discount whiskey. But he always felt he was special, and winning a $43 million lottery proved it.
With all that money, everything is great for Jimmy—until people from his past start coming out of the woodwork. First, his sexy stepmother, who seduced him as a teenager. Then his uncle, just released from Folsom after a five-year jolt for securities fraud, a crim
e that bankrupted Jimmy’s father. Mix in a broke ex-stripper and a down-on-his luck drug dealer, both seeking payback over transgressions Jimmy thought were long forgotten.
Caught in the middle are investigator Dan Reno and his good buddy Cody Gibbons, two guys just trying to make an honest paycheck. Reno, straining to keep his home out of foreclosure, thinks that’s his biggest problem. But his priorities change when Gibbons and Jimmy are kidnapped by a gang of cartel thugs out for a big score. Fighting to save his friend’s life, Reno is drawn into a mess that leaves dead bodies scattered all over northern Nevada.
Coming in 2015:
DARK ICE
HARD PREJUDICE
Table of Contents
Speed Metal Blues
Copyright
Also by Dave Stanton
Dedication
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilougue
About the Author
