Stateline

by Dave Stanton



  STATELINE

  A DAN RENO NOVEL

  _______________________

  DAVE STANTON

  Copyright © 2013 Dave Stanton

  All rights reserved.

  LaSalle Davis Books

  Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALSO BY DAVE STANTON

  Dying for the Highlife

  Speed Metal Blues

  Dark Ice

  Hard Prejudice

  For the late

  Richard Nelson Salle

  TABLE OF 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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  More Dan Reno Novels

  CHAPTER 1

  I knew Wenger would be pissed I was bailing early, but he would have to live with that. Unfortunately, I had to live with it, too. It wasn’t that I considered him a bad person, but as a boss, Rick Wenger was a tremendous pain in the ass. Besides being a chronic clock watcher, he was also the most prolific tightwad I’d ever known. He always felt a three-dollar lunch tip could trigger financial disaster, and habitually pinched pennies to the point that the effort far outweighed the fiscal benefit. In the two years I worked for him he’d never bought me lunch, and after a couple of embarrassing restaurant incidents, I’d started picking up his share of the gratuity.

  As an investigator, Wenger also left much to be desired. His latest fiasco was his interview with Lem Tuggle the day before up at San Quentin. Tuggle, a psychotic 250-pound ghetto thug, despised the white establishment and was well known in San Jose law enforcement circles for his history of violent offenses. Wenger had insisted I come with him to the interview in case things turned ugly.

  “My schedule’s packed, Rick,” I told him.

  “Rearrange your meetings, then.”

  “What do you think he’s gonna do, leap over the table and attack you?”

  “He’s in prison for an unprovoked battery on two white businessmen in broad daylight. He didn’t even try to rob them. They’re still in the hospital.”

  “The jailers will have him cuffed. You got nothing to worry about.”

  “I still want you there.”

  Recently Wenger had begun ordering me to join him every time he had to interview anyone who posed a physical threat. I didn’t think this was out of cowardice, but rather out of fear that an altercation resulting in injury would cause him to miss work, and he’d never recover the lost billable hours.

  Since I relied on him for a paycheck, I tried my best to accommodate Wenger. But the previous morning found me wasting time with a street hustler who claimed he witnessed a robbery I was working. It took until noon to sift through his lies, and by then it was too late—Wenger had headed to San Quentin on his own.

  I was at my desk when Wenger burst back into the office late that afternoon, his heels clicking with energy as he walked across the marble floor. “Tuggle was a piece of cake,” he said. “I had a feeling it’d go well. He was totally cooperative and came clean with everything I needed.”

  “Sounds like they must have upped his dosage of Valium.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Good job, Rick.”

  He shot me a slightly disgusted glance, then his smile returned. “Covie’s gonna love this,” he said, referring to Covie and Associates, one of San Jose’s largest law firms and by far our biggest customer. Wenger looked giddy—the scent of money always did that to him. I knew he was probably consumed with plotting how the information he gained from Tuggle might justify a healthy rate hike to Covie. Maybe he could even parlay this into some higher profile cases; Covie generally only used us for chickenshit stuff that other investigators didn’t have time for.

  Wenger pulled out his Sony portable recorder and said, “Dan, you want to see what a real professional investigator does? Maybe you can learn from this.” He grinned as he pushed the play button. I waited for the interview to begin, but the tape was silent. He hit stop, clicked play again, then once more. His forehead wrinkled. Nothing but silence.

  “What the…” he muttered as he popped the eject button. He held the tape up close to his face and squinted, as if trying to read it. Then he put the tape back in and spent the next half hour jabbing the play, fast forward, and rewind buttons, until he finally accepted the fact that somehow, he, Rick Wenger, PI, had not recorded the interview with Lem Tuggle.

  Without the recording, the interview was worthless. Wenger snatched up the tape and heaved it across the office, then smashed it into oblivion with the heel of his cordovan wingtips.

  “Tough break,” I said, biting my lip to hide the smile spreading across my face, but Wenger caught my contortions. Then I really did it—I pulled open my bottom desk drawer, grabbed the bottle of whiskey I kept handy, poured myself a slug in a Styrofoam coffee cup, and toasted him.

  ******

  It was a few minutes past eight-thirty the next morning when I walked into the office. Wenger sat behind his desk, wearing his suit coat, studying his computer screen. His curly dark hair was freshly cut, and it made his ears stick out and his face look fleshier than usual. He glanced up at me.

  “Glad you could make it,” he said. “I trust you can do some meaningful work today.”

  “Morning, Rick.”

  His eyes narrowed, then he tossed a file across the desk. “I hope you enjoyed your imbibing last night. But you’re on the clock now.”

  I felt my eyebrows rise. “Imbibing?”

  “Do you really think you’re impressing anyone with your drunken private eye act?”

  “I had one drink yesterday.”

  He rolled his eyes, which looked particularly watery. Wenger had a chronic allergy problem. “I want a diagram of AJ’s Saloon and write a complete report on the mugging,” he said, then his gaze returned to his computer screen. “Make it chronological—describe everything that happened.”

  “It’s almost finished, you’ll have it by noon when I take off,” I said.

  His head snapped up. “What?”

  “I told you before—I’m heading to Tahoe today.”

  “What? You never said a damn thing about leaving early.”

  “Yeah, I did. Anyway, look at the bright side—you get some extra time off from managing me. Consider it a bonus.”

  “Ha, ha,” Wenger grumbled under his breath. He stood and paced around the office. “You know, maybe we should have you punch a time card.”

  “Gee, Rick, that sounds fun. Would I get to punch out when I go take a leak?”

  “You better watch it, mister, or I’ll write you up.”

  “Write me up?”

  “That’s right—it’s what they do in corporate America. When an employee screws up, they write up an incident report and put it in your permanent file. It’s how managers document subpar performance, and justify terminating an employee.”

  “Wow,” I
said. “Here, let me help you out.” I grabbed a pen and paper and scrawled: Dan Reno left early Friday to go to Tahoe. What an asshole.

  “Here you go,” I said.

  Wenger’s face reddened, then he crumpled the paper and tossed it at the trash can, but missed. “I’ve got more important things to do than have this conversation,” he said. “I’ve got a meeting with Steenebeck Trotter. I’m gonna win some business.” He grabbed his briefcase and walked out the door, then popped his head back in.

  “Make sure you leave your report on my desk and please show up sober and on time Monday, eight A.M. sharp,” he said, tapping his watch. I gave him a mock salute as he left, but he was already gone, hunched forward and hurrying down Second Street in the cold February drizzle, a man with figures, decimal points, and high dreams of billable hours at inflated rates on his mind.

  ******

  By eleven-thirty I had finished my report and Wenger hadn’t returned yet, so I dropped it on his desk and jogged across the street through what had turned into a heavy rainstorm. I would have liked to pick up a sandwich from the lunch joint down the street, but I was getting soaked and had at least a four-hour drive in front of me, so I peeled off over to the half-flooded lot where I was parked.

  I climbed into my car and relaxed as she fired up without a hitch and idled smoothly, despite the clatter from a muffler that needed replacement. My white Nissan Maxima had served me faithfully since I picked it up brand new ten years ago. I bought it with my fiancée the day before we married, and when she left me five years later, I lost our savings, the furniture, the appliances, and just about everything else of value, but I kept the goddamned car. It was a great car for an investigator; a Japanese four-door sedan, white, sporty for its time, but mundane enough to not create undue notice in a stakeout.

  When Wenger did surveillance, he used his late-model BMW, and I used to think he was foolish, but BMWs and other expensive cars had become so common in Santa Clara County that they just faded into the street scene. It was all the money generated from the exploding computer and technology industries that paid for these cars. A lot of people here were getting rich. I wasn’t one of them. I just hoped the Nissan could hold up and give me another couple years of reliable service before it faded into the ranks of a beater, a piece of shit, a heap, and then I could drive around Silicon Valley and clearly be identified as a member of the underclass.

  I pulled out onto Second Street and turned the wipers to full speed to keep up with the heavy splatter of rain on my cracked windshield. I was anxious to get out of town; the traffic out of the Santa Clara Valley would be hell if it got too late. I blew through a yellow light on Guadalupe Parkway, blasting through the rain and onto the freeway like a man on a serious mission. My driving was typical of the traffic-weary commuters in San Jose; when presented with a rare space of open road, I’d always gun it in revenge for the gridlock that inevitably lurked ahead.

  I had received the invitation to the wedding in Lake Tahoe four weeks ago. It was addressed to Mr. Daniel Reno, and I noted that my last name was spelled correctly—this was often not the case. My father was born Richard Reynolds, but when I was in high school he started researching our family tree, and found out his true surname was Renolowski. My grandfather was half Polish and half Hungarian and emigrated from Poland to America in 1916, but evidently the immigration officers at Ellis Island couldn’t understand his broken English or decipher his crappy penmanship, so they penciled in Reynolds on his citizenship papers. The name had suited us well until my dad got a wild hair up his ass and decided it was high time to recognize our heritage and assume the proper family name.

  To my family’s dismay, he was utterly insistent, but in a bizarre twist of logic he decided to assume a shortened version of the name and had our name legally changed to Reno. My mother, 100-percent Irish and a very practical woman, wept out of frustration, but the old man never wavered. Eventually my younger brother and sister and I accepted the name and got on with our lives. It took a little longer for my mother—it wasn’t until my father died that she forgave him.

  I was invited to the wedding of my ex-wife’s niece, Desiree McGee, who was marrying a man named Sylvester Bascom on Saturday at Caesar’s in South Lake Tahoe. I was surprised to be invited, and my first inclination had been to decline, but the prospect of a day of skiing in Tahoe won me over. The night before, Julia, my ex, had called to instruct me on proper behavior.

  “Do you have a decent-looking sports coat?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Well, this is a fancy wedding. Don’t try showing up in jeans.”

  “Of course not.”

  “And getting drunk would be totally uncalled for.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not drinking anymore,” I said.

  “Or any less, I’m sure.”

  I cleared my throat. “So, who’s the lucky groom?”

  “Sylvester Bascom. Desiree’s been going out with him for years. Haven’t you ever met him?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You’d remember if you did,” she said. “His family is one of the richest in California. The wedding’s going to be fantastic.”

  “I’m still wondering why I’m invited in the first place.”

  “My family still likes you, Dan.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, I helped Desiree with a lot of the arrangements. It’s going to be the largest wedding ceremony they’ve ever had at Caesar’s.”

  “Jesus, how many people are going?”

  “Over five hundred,” she said.

  “No shit, huh?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she hummed. Julia was a huge fan of weddings. “It will be something else. The Bascoms are paying for the whole thing. The wedding party’s been up at Tahoe all week, living it up, skiing, the nicest restaurants every night, staying at the best hotels, all on the Bascoms’ tab. The rehearsal dinner is at the Mountainside Mine. They’ve reserved the entire restaurant on a Friday night for a private party of two hundred. Can you believe that?”

  “No kidding,” I said, properly impressed. The restaurant was probably the most exclusive steakhouse between Sacramento and Salt Lake City. I’d never eaten there, but I’d occasionally stopped by the adjoining Midnight Tavern to enjoy a cocktail in their funky old-West-style barroom.

  “It’s true,” Julia said. “John Bascom, Sylvester’s dad, is mega-rich. He’s the president of the Bascom Lumber empire. Listen to what Desiree told me about how he arranged the Mountainside Mine.”

  As might be expected, Julia explained, John Bascom had some difficulty convincing the restaurant’s management to close the facility to the public and host his son’s pre-wedding party on a Friday night during the peak of the ski season. The majority owner, a severe-looking man who was also the head chef, had treated Bascom with disdain, as if Bascom were a typical commoner trying to finagle a table without a reservation. Bascom had offered two hundred dollars a head, or forty grand total, and when the owner refused, Bascom asked him to name his price.

  “You can’t afford it,” the man said, his assistant manager smirking behind him. Bascom stepped back, instructed his personal clerk to write a check, then handed it to the chef. “I assume that will do,” Bascom said. The man nodded, holding the $100,000-check in front of him with both hands, an uncertain smile on his face.

  “In the future, don’t ever tell me what I can or cannot afford,” Bascom said, then walked back to his limousine, his aide hurrying to keep up.

  Julia also went into detail about the lavish arrangements for the wedding ceremony and reception. Desiree, a sleek, blond, twenty-four-year-old, was grateful for Julia’s help with the wedding plans. Since so many people were invited, there was a number of challenging logistical issues. For instance, the chapel at Caesar’s was much too small, so the grand ballroom was converted into a makeshift church, complete with portable stained-glass façades and an elaborate multi-tier pulpit. I found myself wondering if Desiree’s father, Jerry McGee
, felt awkward about his daughter’s wedding being paid for by the groom’s parents. Jerry was a dentist and was still recovering from personal bankruptcy. Julia said Jerry insisted on paying for the flowers, but had no idea they would cost upward of $10,000. John Bascom’s wife, Nora, sent him a dummied invoice for $900.

  I’d met Jerry a number of times, and I knew Desiree casually, so I guess that was good enough to make the invite list. It wasn’t much to be proud of, but at least I still had a friendly relationship with my ex-wife’s family. It was more than I could say for most of the divorced men I knew.

  ******

  The rain slackened outside of Stockton as I headed north on Interstate 5. I pulled into a fast-food joint, ordered a chicken sandwich, and ate in my car as I drove. An hour later it started raining hard again. I was in the foothills, nearly to Placerville, and thought about stopping for a whiskey at the old Liars Bench Bar and maybe having one for Wenger, who despised liquor and did not even tolerate a glass of wine with dinner. He had gotten drunk a couple times in college, and made such an ass of himself he swore off alcohol for life. But I resisted the temptation and drove on through the wet gloom. Ten miles up the grade, the rain turned to snow, slowing my progress until a man in a yellow slicker and a cap with a Caltrans insignia flagged me over to the side of the road. “You got to chain up,” he said.

  I pulled on my coat and stepped into the flurries. The temperature was in that indeterminate range where it was cold enough to snow but not quite freezing. I lugged my chains out of the trunk, along with a tarp, channel locks, and a pair of canvas gloves, and went to work on my front tires. I finished without too much trouble and was congratulating myself when I noticed the late-model Ford station wagon that had pulled in behind me.

  A man lay on his back in the muddy slush, struggling with a set of chains. He wore an Indiana Jones brown leather jacket that looked a size too small, and his hands were red with cold. He pulled himself out of the muck, looking around in despair. I could see a woman in the passenger seat of the station wagon, trying to calm two crying toddlers in the back.

  “Trouble?” I asked.

  The man threw up his arms. “I thought there would be some of those guys who install chains for twenty bucks,” he said, shaking his head. He was chubby and balding, his face flushed from his efforts.

  “Let me take a look.” I laid out my tarp next to his car. Cable-style chains hung off his front tire.