Stateline

by Dave Stanton

  What about Edward Cutlip? I was a little wary of him, although nothing in his behavior indicated he was hiding anything. Still, I had to consider him a possible suspect, maybe as an envious aide working some sort of scam on his boss’s spoiled son. I hoped this wasn’t the case; I’d not held back in my communication with him.

  One thing I knew for sure was that Osterlund knew a lot more than he told the police. Unfortunately, he took the knowledge to his grave.

  I dialed Cody Gibbons as I drove over the dark summit, to ask if he’d been able to get copies of the police files I’d requested. The cellular reception was scratchy, but I was able to hear the gist of his message: Sylvester had no criminal record to speak of; his worst offense was open container. Sven Osterlund’s case file was littered with alcohol, drug, and battery charges, but he had never done any real time. Cody was saying something about high-priced defense lawyers when I asked him to run Edward Cutlip, but we were disconnected before he could answer.

  The cloud cover broke up as I dropped into Carson Valley. Light patches of snow spotted the desert floor, reflecting the distant glow of stars sparkling like cut diamonds against the black sky. I turned north toward Reno and drove the length of the main drag of Carson City, past old bars in brick buildings that had been doing business since the late 1800s, past second-rate casinos, cheap hotels, fast-food joints, auto dealerships, and discount gas stations. I went by the state capitol building in the center of town and decided to get dinner, but I felt overdosed on greasy chow, and Carson City wasn’t the type of town that would offer much in the way of healthier fare. Eventually I found a small restaurant that was closing up even though it was only eight o’clock. I convinced the cook to make me a garden burger and ate leaning against my car in the parking lot. Then I drove another couple miles until the RV centers and convenience markets faded in my rearview mirror, and the commercial strip gave way to State Highway 395.

  The four-lane highway through the desert was straight and flat, and the road seemed to pull the Nissan along, as if the pavement was charged with an energy it drew from the earth below. I cruised along at ninety, making time, my headlights flashing against the sagebrush and scrub that dotted the landscape. A few miles outside of Reno I stopped, filled my tank at a Terrible Herbst gas station, and bought a city map. The address for Erotic Striptease was on Fourth Street.

  I took the Virginia Street exit, driving under the archway proclaiming Reno “The Biggest Little City in the World.” The town was lit up by the neon brightness of the casinos. I drove past The Silver Legacy, The El Dorado, The Nugget, and others, but it was a Monday night and the streets were mostly empty. I hung a right on Fourth, couldn’t find the address, and had to double back, driving slowly until I pulled over in front of an old Victorian-style home set back off the road next to an apartment complex. The house was dark, with a “For Rent” sign in the front window. I walked to the front door, jiggled the locked doorknob, then returned to my car and dialed the phone number for Erotic Striptease. It was disconnected. I rubbed my brow and studied the map until I found the street for Dana’s Escorts. It was on Taylor, on the south side of town.

  Dana’s Escorts’ address was for a well-lit office building with floor-to-ceiling glass walls facing the street, but the sign on the door said Diamond Talent Agency. Velour shades hung from the top of the windows, and a few of the blinds were partially open. I opened the door and stepped inside.

  “Hi,” a quite large woman said to me from behind her desk. She had bright eyes, red lipstick, and a pretty face framed by long curls of blond hair. Her bosom was huge, and her arms were bigger than mine. Despite her girth, she bounced up lightly and stuck out a chubby hand.

  “I’m Gloria Damone. May I help you?”

  “I’m not sure I’m in the right place,” I said. “This is a talent agency?”

  “Yes. We specialize in musical acts, dancers, comedians, and the like.”

  “I see. How about magicians?”

  “Yes, we place magicians occasionally. Are you a magician?”

  “No, but sometimes I wish I were. I’m a private investigator.”

  Gloria sat down, and while she still smiled, she looked a little unsettled. I tried to think of something witty to put her at ease.

  “Actually, I’m trying to solve a mysterious case, and a little magic might go a long way.” It sounded lame, and I regretted it as I said it. Christ, how many brain cells did I fry last night?

  “I see,” she said. Her voice confirmed my hokey attempt at charm wasn’t working. “And what can I do for you?”

  “Do you also manage Dana’s Escorts?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “That is one of our businesses.”

  She seemed an unlikely madam, running a call-girl service behind the front of a talent agency. I wondered how tough she was beneath her cheerful demeanor.

  “Last Friday night, probably around midnight, I believe one or two of your escorts may have gone to the Crown Ambassador in South Lake Tahoe. Did you send any girls there?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t disclose that.”

  “Why not?”

  “The nature of our escort business is confidential. Our clients like it that way.”

  “Your client at the Crown wouldn’t care.”

  “And how would you know that?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “That’s too bad,” she said after a long pause. She had not invited me to sit, but I did so anyway.

  “How did it happen?” she asked.

  “He was murdered.”

  Her mouth opened and closed silently, and her eyes darted. Then she excused herself and went to the ladies’ room.

  The office walls were decorated with framed pictures of famous casino acts. Liberace and Siegfried and Roy were on one wall, and David Copperfield, Wayne Newton, and a troop of bikini-clad dancing girls were on another. I looked at the pictures for a few minutes until she returned and stood beside her desk.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” she said, her painted lips a tight line.

  “Whatever you tell me will be kept confidential.”

  “Even still, I’m bound by our policy.”

  “Look, lady,” I sighed, “I’m not a vice cop. I don’t care what kind of business you run. But if you sent a girl there, she may have witnessed a man stabbed to death. That means she’s in danger. Am I getting through to you?”

  “I don’t think it’s in my best interest to get involved,” she said.

  “You’re involved whether you like it or not.”

  Gloria was trying to stay composed, but she was frowning deeply, as if weighing a great moral dilemma. She studied her desk, shuffled a few papers, then rested her eyes on mine.

  “I can’t help you, and I’d like you to leave,” she said. I stood, taking note of the stout bolt lock on the metal frame of the glass door.

  “Wait for me outside,” she whispered.

  When I reached my car, the lights behind me clicked off, and the parking lot went dark. I zipped my jacket and hiked a foot up on my bumper. After a minute she came out, wearing a thick fur-lined coat over her dress.

  “Follow me in your car,” she said.

  I swung in behind her white Cadillac. We drove around the back streets of Reno, then onto Interstate 80, took the first exit, and drove another few miles before she finally pulled over on a dark residential street. I parked behind her and walked to her window. She motioned for me to get in the passenger seat.

  “Why all the driving around?” I said.

  “I didn’t feel comfortable talking to you in the office. I wanted to go somewhere else.”

  “All right.”

  “Whatever I tell you, I want your word this conversation never happened.”

  “What conversation?”

  She drew a breath, set her hands in her lap, and looked at me. “First, I don’t know anything about what happened in that room. Understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here’s what
I do know. I got a call around eleven on Friday, and a guy wanted two escorts for the night at the Crown Ambassador. I tell him it’s five hundred minimum per girl. That scares a lot of the lowlifes away, but this guy says no problem, and he says to send our hottest talent—he’s a generous tipper. So I set it up, send two girls over to Tahoe. High roller comes to town, has a streak of luck, wants the company of some sexy ladies. Not unusual.”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what I thought. The next thing I know it’s nine in the morning, I’m still in bed, and Samantha calls, says she quits and wants me to mail her check to a P.O. box. Very sudden, like that. I asked her, ‘Why, what’s up?’ She says, for my safety, I don’t want to know. Samantha’s tough, she’s seen it all, so I figure something pretty heavy went down. But I had no idea anyone got killed.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “She said she’d be off the air for a while. Then she hung up.”

  “What about the second girl?”

  “Beverly. She’s young and inexperienced, and I left her a couple messages, but she hasn’t called back. Here,” she said, handing me two file folders. “This is their employment applications and some photos. You can copy down the information, but you can’t keep the pictures.”

  “Did either of them have boyfriends?”

  “Samantha ran around with this biker, a tall guy, dirty gray-blond hair and a long goatee and a bunch of tattoos. I have no idea who he is, but I saw Sam on the back of his Harley once.”

  “How about Beverly?”

  “No one that I know of. She’s only been in town for a few months.”

  It took me ten minutes to copy every word off both the applications. When I was finished, I took a look at their pictures. Samantha had dark hair, an olive complexion, and looked Hispanic or maybe part Asian. There was a full body shot in lingerie showing off her curvaceous figure and huge breasts I assumed were implants. I studied her pictures closely, looking for moles, scars, tattoos, or any other distinguishing features that could identify her.

  Beverly was a marked contrast to Samantha. She had short red hair cut in a feathered pixie style and had a nice body to match her pretty face. She looked more like a country girl than a hooker.

  I handed the files back to Gloria.

  “You have any idea where they might be?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows with Samantha? She could be halfway around the planet or over at the Silver Legacy playing cards. As far as Beverly, I don’t know. She wasn’t from around here. Maybe she went back home.”

  I looked at the notes I’d taken from Beverly’s application. Her previous address was in Salina, Utah.

  “I appreciate your help,” I said.

  “Do you think the police will contact me?”

  “It’s possible. You never met me, right?”

  “You got it,” she said, and started her car. I climbed out with my scribbled notes and watched her drive away.

  ******

  I suppose I should have been happy with the progress I’d made. Identifying the hookers at this stage in the game was a result of good, hard, nose-to-the-grindstone detective work. Make your own luck, I told myself, stay focused and ignore the distractions. But I kept sensing Don Raneswich in my blind spot. Unless he was grossly incompetent or lazy, the detective would be making progress, probably have a line on Dana’s Escorts and Samantha and Beverly, or maybe he had other leads I was unaware of. The police had the tactical advantage of access to phone records, video camera tapes, and forensic evidence, plus it was a lot easier to coerce witnesses with a badge. My advantage was speed and stealth, and the willingness to break the law when necessary.

  I stopped at a small all-night restaurant on the corner of Virginia and Fifth, drank a cup of coffee, and reviewed my notes on Samantha Nunez. She was thirty-two, and her background seemed as sad and wasted as an empty bottle of whiskey discarded in the weeds of a vacant lot. She had gone to high school in Los Angeles and did not check the box for “graduated.” Her last three jobs were waitress, erotic dancer, and “escort” at the defunct Mustang Ranch. I went out the front door of the restaurant to a payphone, checked the Yellow Pages, and, to my amazement, there was a listing for Nunez, initial S, complete with phone number and address. Hell, maybe the bodacious Miss Nunez would even be home on a Monday night.

  The address was in west Reno. I turned onto her street in a slummy, rundown section of town. Half the streetlights were blown out, and the curbs were jammed with a junkyard fleet of derelict vehicles, with enough bald tires, cracked windshields, and trashed interiors to keep an auto shop in business for a decade. On the corner, a group of black teenagers huddled under a streetlamp, beanies low on their heads, their hands thrust in their coat pockets. They eyed me sullenly as I made a U-turn.

  I found a spot to park around the corner, strapped on my bulletproof vest, and tightened my holster across my chest. Then I walked back up the apartment-lined street toward the address I had written on the inside of a matchbook.

  The Prairie Rose apartments looked like they may have bloomed years ago, then were left to shrivel and die in the cold desert air. The black wrought-iron gate screeched loudly when I entered the courtyard, and I walked around a large pool that, in better days, may have been sparkling and turquoise, but it had been drained and was caked with dirt, the bottom littered with beer cans, broken glass, a tricycle, and a plastic lounge chair.

  I climbed the concrete stairs up to the second-floor balcony and went down a walkway crammed with weather-faded lawn chairs, soiled couches, and miscellaneous junk. I double-checked the address, then stopped at unit 216. Light was shining from around the curtains. I heard music, but I couldn’t tell if it was coming from 216 or 215. I knocked, waited, then knocked again louder, peeking through the curtains, and when there was no answer I knocked so hard it bruised my knuckles.

  The door to 215 flew open and rap music blared obnoxiously. A black kid with cornrows and a missing front tooth stuck his head out.

  “Yo, man, yo’ ho’ ain’t home, John, so save yo’ money and go home and wax yo’ own jimmy.”

  “Huh?” I said. He shot me a look that made it clear my presence on the balcony was an imposition, and slammed the door shut. I shuffled around for a moment, then knocked on his window.

  “You deaf an’ dumb, man?” he said, jutting his head out the door. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen, but he had jailhouse tattoos on the fronts of his fingers, and had put on a red doo-rag to show his gang colors.

  “You want to make an easy twenty?” I asked.

  “Fuck you, faggot.”

  “Just looking for information,” I said. I folded a twenty-dollar bill between two fingers and held it up.

  “Inside,” he said, tugging me by the sleeve and closing the door behind us. He grabbed at the twenty, but I held it out of his reach. Two preschool-age kids sat on the floor up close to the TV, so they could hear it over the music.

  “Who lives next door?” I said.

  “Mexican ho’ with big tits, man.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “I got better things to do than keep track a’ her.” I put the twenty in my pocket.

  “Awright, a couple days ago she was here and left with Mr. One Eight Seven on his bike.”

  “Mr. One Eight Seven?”

  “Yeh. He ’bout the only white man got the balls to come out here after sundown, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s her old man, jack. If it wasn’t for him, I’d already been next door, pumpin’ that fine bitch.”

  “You think so?” I said, and he glared up at me suspiciously, trying to figure if it was an insult.

  “Whatchu sayin’, man?”

  “Forget it. Describe Mr. One Eight Seven.”

  “He’s white, about yo’ size, got a big, long mustache and beard.” He ran his thumb and forefinger down from above his lip to below his jaw. “He got tats all over
him. Rumor is he just did ten years in Soledad for homicide. That’s why he called One Eight Seven. Now gimme the Jackson.”

  I held him off. “What’s his real name?”

  “Hell if I know, man.”

  “How do I find him?”

  “Beat the fuck outa me. Go look around town for a ugly white motherfucker on a chopper.”

  “You want the twenty, you gotta give me more to go on,” I said, and I could see the impatient aggression in his eyes.

  “I dunno whatchu want, man, know what I’m sayin’? I never talked to him. I just seen him around. When she left with him, she had a suitcase.”

  “Tell me more about him.”

  He hesitated, and I could see the lies forming behind his eyes.

  “Don’t bullshit me,” I said, moving in close and grabbing his arm around the biceps. I squeezed, and my fingers overlapped to the first joint. He squirmed and pushed at me, but I forced him down to his knees.

  “What else?” I said.

  He swore, slapping at my arm, his face twisted in pain.

  “He got the good rock, man. Let go!”

  “He sells to you?”

  “Yeah, now let go,” he pleaded. I eased my grip slightly.

  “Is he big time? Supplying the neighborhood?”

  He didn’t answer, but I could see the fear in his face. I let him go, and he sat on the carpet, rubbing his bruised arm. I pulled an extra twenty from my wallet and dropped the two bills in his lap. “Buy the kids some healthy food,” I said as I opened the door. The children never took their eyes off the TV.

  It was nearing midnight when I drove away. I considered my options, none which were particularly promising. Samantha Nunez and her supposed biker boyfriend, Mr. 187, could be anywhere. Mr. 187 himself was now a suspect in my mind, based on the fact that he was a friend of Samantha and his name was a reference to the California penal code for homicide. I thought about driving around Reno and scouting bar parking lots for Harleys, but it was a long shot.

  If I were a cop, I’d check to see where Samantha used a credit card last, or if she flew out of Reno, and I’d also check with Soledad and the other prisons in California and Nevada to see if anyone matching Mr. 187’s description had been released in the last year. But none of those options were available to me at the moment, and I wanted to make progress now, while Officer Raneswich was at home with his head on a pillow.