by Dave Stanton
“You might say that, assuming hell has froze over,” Cody said.
“Edward, let’s drive over to The King’s Head, and we’ll start from there and try to find Cody’s truck.”
“What in the good lord’s name happened to you guys?”
“Later,” I said, as we climbed into Edward’s sedan. It didn’t take more than a minute after we arrived at The King’s Head to find what we were looking for. Cody’s truck was parked down the street at an awkward angle to the curb, as if he’d been forced to stop. The truck appeared unmolested, save for being covered with a light coating of snow.
The nurse had stuffed our personal effects, including wet and muddy clothes, in a plastic bag. Cody asked Edward to retrieve the keys from the bag and open the truck. Fortunately, most of our stuff, including the suitcase I used to carry my bounty-hunting gear, was locked under the truck’s bed cover, which was still secured. But our vests and firearms, as well as our jackets, were gone. My cell phone was also missing.
“Edward, we need to go to a hotel,” I said. “Can you take a cab out here and drive the truck back for us?”
“What? Screw that,” Cody said. “I’m not leaving it here. I’ll drive it.”
Edward pulled his car forward so Cody could stretch from the backseat of the Ford into the truck’s driver’s seat. He managed to get behind the wheel without falling, which was impressive considering his hands and feet were hardly functional.
“I’ll just drive slow,” he said. But before we pulled away, a tow truck came up the street and stopped alongside us.
“I was sent out here to tow this truck,” the driver said. “They said it was abandoned.”
“Who sent you?” I said.
“Sheriff’s office.”
“Marcus Grier?”
“Grier? No, apparently he doesn’t work there anymore.”
“Doesn’t work there? I was just in his office last week.”
“Well, he’s gone now.”
“Why?” I said.
“Beats me. I’m just a tow truck driver. I don’t work for Silverado County.”
“Who called it in then?”
He looked down at his clipboard. “Deputy Fingsten.”
Edward turned the key, starting the truck for Cody, and got back into his sedan.
“I guess it ain’t abandoned,” the tow truck driver said.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said.
“Hell, no skin off my ass. I get paid by the hour.” He smiled, turned around, and headed back down the road.
We drove over to Harvey’s Casino. I asked Edward to check us into a two-bedroom suite under a phony name. Eventually Pace and his crew would know we were still in town, but I hoped to avoid that until we were able to defend ourselves.
Edward finished at the check-in counter, then wheeled Cody and me through the lobby and over to the elevators. With my hands and feet the size of soccer balls, and wearing the hospital gown, I’m sure I looked like something out of a freak show, but Cody looked downright scary with his black eyes and unruly beard.
“You look like a broken-down Frankenstein going in for repairs,” I told him on the elevator.
“Yeah? Well, I’ve got advice for you—save yourself some grief and don’t look in any mirrors.”
Once we got into our room, I filled Edward in on the details of the previous afternoon’s events.
“What happens now?” he said. “Do you go into hiding, or what?”
“Or what,” Cody said.
“Huh?”
“If Pace suspects we’re still in town, he’ll try to do something about it,” I said. “Pace obviously doesn’t want Sylvester Bascom’s murder solved. He threatened to kill me if he sees me again.”
Edward blinked and his eyes grew round. “Was he serious?”
“He nearly killed us last night,” Cody said.
“Edward, your involvement potentially puts you in danger,” I said. “You need to be careful you’re not followed. If you see anything suspicious, call me right away. Keep your car doors locked. If you’re in California and a Silverado County squad car tries to pull you over, drive into Nevada and don’t stop until you get to the Douglas County Sheriff’s building. It’s up Highway 50 a few miles.”
“Aren’t you going to leave town?”
“No.”
“Hell, I just got here,” Cody added, a thin smile on his battered face.
“Right now I’d like to talk to John Bascom in person to update him on the situation. And also, would you mind bringing our stuff up from the truck?”
“Are we gonna eat today?” Cody said. It was noon.
“Edward, what do you say? How about a large combo pizza and some beers? And after you bring up the stuff, would you move Cody’s truck across the street? Park it in back of Harrah’s, in that big main lot, the one that’s always packed. Try to find a spot where it’s not very visible. Remember, call me if you think you’re being followed.”
Edward didn’t protest or hesitate for a moment. “I’ll call Mr. Bascom and ask him to be here shortly,” he said, then left on his errands.
“The dude’s a trooper,” Cody said.
“Yeah, he’s a good guy,” I said. “I hope he’s being paid well.”
22
Cody and I were finishing the pizza and drinking beer out of straws. The bandages on our hands were smeared with grease and pizza sauce. There was a knock on the door, and Edward let John Bascom in.
“John Bascom, Cody Gibbons,” I said, enjoying a beer buzz and trying, unsuccessfully I thought, for a tone of formality. “He’s a detective for San Jose PD and a close friend of mine.” Cody was sitting in an easy chair with his legs propped up on another chair. He balanced a piece of pizza on his fist and leaned forward to drink out of a straw angling from a can of Coors. We were both still in our hospital gowns since we couldn’t fit our clothes over the bandages on our hands and feet.
“I thought it would be best we talk in person,” I said. “I met the man who stabbed your son.”
“What?” Bascom said.
“Take a seat,” I said.
“Have a beer, man,” Cody said, but Bascom ignored him.
“Yeah, I met him,” I said. “I haven’t got his name yet, but I think he should be easy enough to find, unless he goes into hiding, and I don’t think he will.”
“How do you know he’s the killer?” Bascom said.
“I’ve talked to two eyewitnesses who were in the room. They described him in detail. He was in the truck that ran me off the road, and he shot at me. Then last night, Cody and I were ambushed by him and three cops. They damn near drowned us, then we almost froze to death.”
“Three cops? What in hell are you talking about?” Bascom said. His face bunched up and he squinted at me, as if I were an inept underling who’d just blown the last of his credibility. He shook his head. “You’re telling me three cops did this to you last night?”
“They were trying to scare us out of town. They don’t want me investigating your son’s murder.”
“Why the hell not? What kind of lunacy is this?”
“It may sound crazy, but it ain’t bullshit,” Cody said, struggling to open the flip top of a beer with a pen. Edward opened two for him and put straws in each.
“What’s this all about, Reno?”
“The Silverado County sheriff, Conrad Pace, does not want me trying to find out who killed your son. I think Pace is impeding the police investigation too—that’s probably why Raneswich and Iverson haven’t made much progress.”
“You think Raneswich and Iverson are crooked?” Bascom said.
“Good chance.”
“Goddammit! I knew I couldn’t trust those two jackasses!” Bascom’s eyes were livid. He began pacing back and forth.
“What could possibly be Conrad Pace’s motivation?” he said.
“I don’t know that yet.”
Bascom looked out the window. “This is all wild, just too wild,” he mused. “Do
you have any idea why my son was murdered?”
“I still think it was a botched robbery. Sylvester had two hookers in his room at the Crown. One of them let Michael Dean Stiles, a known drug dealer, into the room to rob Sylvester. Sven Osterlund was in the closet, watching and probably filming your son and the hookers from a peephole. Osterlund came out of the closet, and he and Sylvester got the best of Stiles. So the hooker let another man in, who was there as backup. This man stabbed your son.”
“The hooker, who is the hooker who let the men in?”
“Her name’s Samantha Nunez.”
“So she knows for certain what happened,” Bascom said.
“That’s true,” I said. “Raneswich and Iverson are supposedly looking for her. She’s disappeared.”
Bascom paced the room, rubbing his temples. “Cops on the take, murder, drugs, whores,” he muttered. “My son…he had so much to live for…” Grief etched his face.
“You need to watch your back,” I said. “These cops know you hired me, and they might try to convince you to forget about resolving your son’s death. Their methods won’t be pleasant. Check into a different hotel, under an assumed name. Or, better yet, leave town.”
“What?” Bascom said. “I’m not going anywhere. Our deal was you deliver the killer. To me. Here.”
“I know what our deal is.”
“Are you going to finish the job?”
I stared at John Bascom. “These men will figure out soon enough I’m still in town. When they do, they may try to find me through you. You want nothing to do with Conrad Pace, believe me. Leave town. Tonight. Take Edward and your family with you.”
Bascom ignored me. “I want the names of all the crooked cops, Reno. If they’re protecting the son of a bitch who killed my boy, they need to be prosecuted. I know the editor in chief at the Sacramento Bee, and if what you say is true, this will be the story of the year.”
I shook my head. “You don’t seem to be hearing me–”
“I hear you loud and clear, goddammit! I’m paying you to do a job, not shell out chickenshit advice! From what it looks like, you’d be better off looking out for yourself instead of worrying about me.”
“Keep your money. I don’t need it.”
“I didn’t take you for a quitter, Reno.”
My mouth tightened, and I looked at the floor and took a deep breath. “You remind me of a man I used to know, Mr. Bascom. He never backed down from a situation in his life. And when he died before his time, it left an empty hole in a lot of lives.”
“Is dime-store sentimentality included in a package deal with shoddy, unfinished detective work?” he replied.
“I’ve got enough bodies on my conscience. I don’t need yours.”
Bascom paced the room with his hands on his hips. I watched him impotently, feeling like a clown in the hospital gown. After a length of time had passed, he looked down at me.
“I understand you’re disabled at the moment, but the killer of my son is still free and nameless,” he said.
• • •
After Bascom and Edward left, Cody and I sat around like a couple of extras from a mummy movie, watching TV and drinking slow beers. The next day I found Marcus Grier’s home phone number in the white pages and managed to dial his number, but there was no answer.
By our second evening at the hotel, Cody proclaimed he had mastered the art of drinking beer through a straw.
“Watch, I can down one almost as fast as if I was chugging it.” He set up a beer can on the table and drained it.
I decided we’d remove our bandages and check out the next morning. We had settled in to watch the seven o’clock movie when the room phone rang.
“Dan, it’s Edward.” His voice was trembling. “Those guys. Those bastards found me.”
• • •
The way Edward told it, they had caught him as he was walking to his car after having dinner at a small burger joint, a quiet place away from the lights and commotion of the casinos.
“Stop right there, boy,” a voice said, and Conrad Pace emerged from the dark, his face shadowed by his cowboy hat. “Nice night like tonight, you’re not in any hurry, right?”
“Actually, I am,” Edward said.
“You’d best slow down, son. It’s downright impolite to turn your back on me.”
Edward walked faster and nearly reached his car, but Pace was too close. He grabbed Edward’s arm and stood over him, then struck him across the mouth with the side of his gloved fist, the coarse rawhide opening a cut on Edward’s lip.
“A couple friends of yours, a private eye and his buddy. I’d like to have a word with them. So why don’t we get in your car and you drive me to where they’re at?”
A bloody string of spittle fell from Edward’s mouth. He looked up at Pace and saw his yellowed teeth and gray mustache in a streak of light from a car passing by on the road.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Edward said.
“Get in the fucking car,” Pace said.
A hand suddenly closed around Edward’s neck from behind.
“Pay attention, Theo,” a different voice said. Edward froze at the sound of his middle name. His mother was the only one who had ever called him Theo. The hand tightened on his neck.
“You lucky,” the voice whispered, “maybe I let you live.”
As Edward fumbled with his keys, he saw a dark hand reach out, holding a pair of arced garden shears. The steel blades glinted in the moonlight.
“You know what these are for?” the voice said. “I sharpened them myself.”
Edward dropped his keys to the gravel, and as he bent to pick them up a carload of drunks careened into the parking lot, the sedan lurching on its springs and skidding sideways over patches of ice and rock. Laughter and jeers spilled from a partially rolled-down window, and a fleshy buttocks, half exposed above lowered jeans, was pressed up against the glass. The car’s tail end came around, the tires locked and skidding, and hit the back bumper of Edward’s Ford. The Ford jolted on impact, Conrad Pace was knocked to the ground, and then the hand was no longer on Edward’s neck.
The driver of the sedan pegged the throttle, roasting the tires in a well-executed fishtail, and bounced down the curb and back out onto the highway.
Edward snatched his keys up and broke for the tree line, scrambling like a cat with a dog on its tail. His rubber soles caught traction, and he caught a terrifying glimpse of a barrel-shaped, dark man behind him. Edward hurdled a low fence, and then he was in the trees, darting and cutting through the moonlit woods.
He ran instinctively, fueled by fear and adrenaline. The garden shears whizzed past him, tumbling through the air like a pinwheel. Edward leaped a shallow stream and followed the water down into the forest, running full out, his feet dancing around snow-covered rocks, branches, and stumps, his hands knocking icy foliage from his face.
Ten minutes later he stopped, panting and soaked with sweat. His pursuers were nowhere in sight. He crouched and waited, hidden in the lee of a fallen pine, and after a few minutes his pulse returned to normal. That’s when he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called me.
• • •
The next morning the room looked like the aftermath of a high-school party. Empty beer cans were strewn about the floor, and a pizza box lay face down on the carpet. I hobbled into the bathroom and tried to brush my teeth.
“I’m done with these bandages,” Cody said when I came out. He was gnawing at his hand.
“Let me call the doctor first,” I said. After a minute I reached a nurse who said if we removed the wrapping, we should wear gloves and two pairs of socks for another week. I began tearing at the gauze with my teeth and managed to unwrap my right hand. It was pale and stiff, and a collection of small blisters covered the skin on my fingers. Working the muscles, I was able to make a fist after a minute.
We were peeling the wrappings from our feet when Edward arrived.
“You sure that’s a good
idea?” he said, watching us pull at the bandages.
“No,” I said.
“But it beats the hell out of not being able to scratch you balls,” Cody said, flexing his hand.
“Or hold a beer can,” I said.
“Speaking of which, looks like you guys had a good time last night,” Edward commented, glancing around the room. His lower lip was swollen, and there was a broad scrape across his cheek.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Fine, except for a fat lip,” Edward said. “Well, there’s no question Conrad Pace knows you’re still in town.”
“He’s probably got a lot of eyes out there. You sure you weren’t followed here?”
He nodded vigorously. “Yes, I was very careful. After I lost them in the woods, I made my way out and walked back to the Nevada side. I spent the night at one of the cheap hotels behind the casinos, and picked up my car once it was light. What are you going to do now?” His eyes were round and full of anxiety and expectation.
I stretched my fingers and squeezed them into a fist. “Go back to work,” I said.
“Here you go,” Edward said, his expression uncertain and a bit incredulous. He had picked up our freshly washed clothes from the hotel laundry. He set the neat stack in my hands. My fingers didn’t feel normal; the joints ached, and the pads seemed a little numb. But at least now I could change out of the ridiculous hospital getup.
“Mr. Bascom called his friend at the newspaper,” Edward said. “The guy wants to talk to you. From what I gather, this is the type of story that can make a career for a journalist. Here’s his number.”
Once Cody had his hands and feet free, he called room service for breakfast. “You want anything?” he asked Edward, who politely declined, then left for his hotel.
“Hey,” I said, as Cody lumbered off toward the shower, “I promised Edward I’d take him to the cathouse while we’re here. I owe him that.”
“I’d say we have more important things to do,” he replied.
I picked up the phone book and found a listing for a gun shop and shooting range in Stateline. We had breakfast, then walked outside into a thin sunlight that provided little warmth. Cody set out across the street over to Harrah’s, while I hung back, watching for a tail. I waited a minute, then followed him. I saw Cody reach his truck, parked under a tree in the middle of Harrah’s parking lot. I was still without a jacket, and I put my hands in my jean pockets and hurried to get out of the cold.
