Dying for the Highlife (15 page)

Jimmy peeked out the window. A lowered ’67 Impala was parked at the curb. In the passenger seat, a man with a red bandana low on his forehead sat with his arm hanging out the window.

Jimmy could hear bits of conversation coming from the front door. He looked at the bindle in his palm and started to open it, but stopped when he noticed Sanzini had left his keys on the desk. He froze, his eyes staring at the key to the drawer.

The blow in the drawer was worth close to two grand. Jimmy felt his pulse quicken.

The voices grew louder and Jimmy looked out the window and saw Sanzini and a man talking in front of the house. The man was a dark Latino, tall and slender, his brown arms scrolled with blue ink that looked like random graffiti. He was pointing at Sanzini.

Jimmy picked up the keys. His hands were slick with moisture. He fumbled the key into the lock on the drawer, opened it, grabbed the baggie, and eased it into his pocket. He checked the window again, then slid out of the room, down the hallway, and into the kitchen. He pulled open a rickety sliding-glass door, the runners rusty and caked with grime. Then he was outside, sprinting, his chest pounding as he scrambled over the backyard fence into a neighboring yard. After coming out to the street the next block over, he ran a mile as fast as he could. When he stopped to catch his breath, he heard the roar of a large bore motorcycle engine, maybe a block or two away. The sound faded, and he ran two more miles. Within an hour he was on a bus for Redding.

J
ohn Homestead walked into his dreary apartment. The sun had just gone down, and he was dragging after eight hours on his feet. He worked in the paint department of a chain hardware store, and his co-workers were two young men putting themselves through college. They were happy and athletic, playing grab ass and ogling every female who walked by. They seemed oblivious to life’s difficulties and disappointments.

John had driven home from Tahoe after Lou Calgaretti conceded that finding Jimmy might take some time. The private eye said Jimmy’s phone was turned off, which could mean a number of things, including the possibility Jimmy was traveling out of the country. Lou promised to call as soon as he had something more to go on. John had been home now for almost a week. All he could hope for was Jimmy would show up in the near future.

He mixed a drink and lowered his weary body onto the couch. “Out of the country” sounded both mysterious and…well, privileged. Like it was a place where people from a higher social status went to vacation, a place reserved for people to whom money was not an issue. The lousy punk. All that money, and not a word from him. Apparently vacationing in a foreign country was more important than contacting his father.

John knew he hadn’t been the greatest of parents, but he had fed, clothed, and provided shelter for his son. He had made those sacrifices. He had also put up with Jimmy’s lying, laziness, and selfishness. In addition, he suspected, though he could never quite admit it happened, that Jimmy and Sheila had…

He shook the thought from his head and made another drink. It didn’t matter now—the past was the past. What mattered was finding his son and working out an arrangement for Jimmy to provide for his father monetarily. And if he was unwilling to, John would beat the money out of him with his bare hands if he had to. John clenched his fists and scowled. The time would come for his ungrateful son to act like a decent human being, or else.

The phone rang, a seldom event.

“Hello?”

“Lou Calgaretti here. Your son just checked into Harrah’s in South Lake Tahoe, Mr. Homestead. How soon can you be here?”

John hauled himself off the couch, swallowed a couple of diet pills, threw his clothes in a bag, and was on the road in ten minutes. He sat in the thick rush-hour traffic, muttering to himself, trying to find a decent radio station. It was a Thursday night, and the freeways leading out of San Jose were gridlocked. An AM station reported an accident up ahead. John pounded his steering wheel. The Ford LTD crawled forward.

It took four hours to reach Sacramento. He stopped to fill his tank and buy a few high-caffeine energy drinks. His car did not handle well, and driving the next hundred miles through the mountains would require steady concentration. The moon was a thin sliver, the roads ahead unlit and black.

He finally crested Echo Summit and descended into South Lake Tahoe at one in the morning. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hands shook from the mixture of diet pills and caffeine. He badly needed a drink, but first he pulled over and dialed Lou Calgaretti. No answer.

He drove to Harrah’s casino, found a bar, and ordered a double gin. His heart was racing, and he thought he might be on the verge of a panic attack. One more double, and he could feel his jittery nerves begin to relax. He sat slumped at the bar, his eyes burning, feeling utterly exhausted. Finally he trudged to the check-in counter and asked for a room.

On his way to the elevator, he stopped at a courtesy phone. He paused for a long moment, then picked it up and asked for the room of Jimmy Homestead.

The phone rang once, twice, ten times before John hung up. He carried his suitcase to his room, where he fell onto the bed and passed out fully dressed.

Maybe if he weren’t so tired, John might have instead walked out to the twenty-one tables at Harrah’s, where Jimmy was playing a few lazy hands, catching a tequila buzz, and flirting with a cocktail waitress.

W
e followed the Lamborghini slowly through the dusk, down the main drag of South Lake Tahoe. Heads swiveled to stare as Sheila eased the Italian exotic through the series of lights leading to the casinos at the state line. She pulled into Harrah’s and parked the vehicle on the third floor of the parking garage. As soon as I parked, Cody climbed quickly out of our car and opened the door of the Lamborghini for Sheila. Jimmy stepped out and crossed his arms, watching Cody and his stepmother.

“It’s too late to handle any banking today, so we’ll have to wait until the morning,” Sheila said. Jimmy started walking away, and Sheila followed him, with Cody by her side. I brought up the rear, wondering to what degree Jimmy had agreed to the banking Sheila referred to.

We walked up to the registration counter and stood by while Jimmy got a room and left toward the elevators with his bag.

“After all this, you’re letting him out of your sight?” I said to Sheila.

“I’ve got his car keys,” she replied.

“He could catch a cab and be at the Reno airport in an hour.”

“I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Jimmy has certain motivations to cooperate,” she said.

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

“All you really need to know is you’ll get paid as we agreed, by tomorrow.”

“That easy, huh?”

“Ease up, Dirt,” Cody said. “You want to join us for dinner?”

“No, I need to go turn in the rental car.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow then,” he said. “Sheila and I are going to check in.”

I watched them walk away, Sheila’s tight jeans painted on her heart-shaped ass, Cody’s hulk towering beside her like a huge, untamed animal that responded only to her commands.

The rental car agency stuck me with a $200 penalty for returning an out-of-state car at a site other than where it was rented. I put it on my charge card and walked the two miles to my house. It was a cool night, and I was tired and glad to be home. After starting a fire in my wood-burning stove, I found a microwave dinner in my nearly empty freezer. The meal was tasteless, but I ate it anyway, while I tried without success to find a TV show that would hold my interest. I finally turned off the television and sat in the silence and darkness.

I harbored no false hope regarding Sheila’s promise that by tomorrow I would be paid the ten grand she now legally owed me. Too many factors didn’t add up, the most salient being that Jimmy would be somehow motivated to make his money available to her. The fact that she had asked Cody and me to tell Jimmy “he better cooperate” suggested she was running a ruse on him. And if Jimmy didn’t buy it, I thought it likely Sheila’s next move would involve Cody and me turning up the pressure.

Last winter I had nearly died while hunting down the killer of a lumber tycoon’s son. I’d committed a series of crimes during my investigation, including some that could have landed me in California’s prison system. I had done so at first because I wanted to collect the bounty offered, and later strictly out of self-preservation. When the case was finally over, I felt I’d probably used up most of the good luck in my cosmic reservoir.

If I needed to help persuade Jimmy Homestead to share his fortune with his stepmom, I could become involved in any number of crimes—conspiracy to commit extortion, for one. I could almost hear the voice of my father, the ex-district attorney, from the grave. “Not all criminals are stupid or greedy, some just find themselves in tough situations and use bad judgment,” he once told me. “These are the saddest cases, but they aren’t immune from prosecution.”

I laid my sleeping bag on the couch and closed my eyes against the flickering glow of heat from my stove. My last thoughts before I fell asleep were of promises of money and steamy sex, but my dreams were fraught with vague accusations, repercussions, a chase that led nowhere, and alluring women beyond my grasp.

• • •

It was an hour before sunrise when I woke. I brewed a pot of coffee and made myself a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. The pots and pans and glassware in my cupboards were all new and neatly organized. It was a pleasant reminder that my home had once enjoyed a woman’s touch.

I prepared a forty-pound pack and set out when the sky lightened. Two miles past the meadow behind my cabin, I reached the Sierra’s western flank. The trail steepened, and I slowed my jog as the dusty fire road narrowed, until I was maneuvering carefully along a rocky gorge. A sheer cliff fell from the edge of the trail, to a creek far below. The path eventually veered from the ledge and to a shallow field where a series of rock formations rose at the base of a pine-studded ridge. I started jogging again, following a path into a forested hillside thick with aspen and fir.

Half an hour later, I reached a waterfall cut into a hundred-foot column of rock. The flow was a mere trickle this late in the season; the stream below babbled faintly and was nearly dry in places. Earlier this summer the snow melt had gushed over the precipice, and the riverbed roared with white water. I sat for a minute and filled my canteen, and took in the view of Lake Tahoe from two thousand feet. The alpine lake was deep blue against the pale morning sky, the surface sparkling when the wind gusted off the peaks.

I checked my watch, then double-timed it back home, running hard down the mountain. I was soaked with sweat when I walked in my door at 9:30. Before heading to the shower, I called Cody’s cell. He didn’t answer.

By ten I was dressed in my newest jeans, a button-down shirt, and a blue sports coat. I called Cody again, and this time he picked up.

“Anything to report?” I asked.

“No, nothing,” he said, his voice distant and distracted. “I’ll call you later.”

A minute later I was on the road, a freshly shaved and pressed salesman, business card in hand, a smile glued to my face.

I stopped at every attorney’s and bail bondsman’s office in South Lake Tahoe, introducing myself, chatting with secretaries, sometimes meeting the proprietors, sometimes not. By noon I was finished in South Lake, so I drove around the lake to the north side to peddle my wares in Tahoe City. That took another couple of hours, and then it was an hour drive to Carson City for more of the same. I only covered about a quarter of the listings in Carson by five o’clock.

Sipping a soft drink as I headed back over Spooner pass toward home, I felt pleased with the day’s effort. The most solid result was from a lady attorney who seemed interested in hiring me for a divorce case. This would probably involve following some poor sap for a few days and documenting his activities. Sometimes the subject’s only objectionable behavior was spending too much time hanging out in bars and not enough time working. But more typically, I would learn the guy had a woman on the side. In that case my job would involve taking pictures. It was sordid work, but it was a payday.

I got home, cooked myself some grub, and started watching an old Clint Eastwood cowboy movie. Cody hadn’t called all day, and I can’t say I was surprised. But before Clint had a chance to draw his pistol, my cell rang.

“Dan, things are getting a bit complicated over here,” Cody said. “How about dropping by Harrah’s, and we’ll talk strategy?”

F
inding Jimmy hadn’t been easy for Lou Calgaretti. He was unsuccessful in contacting anyone from Jimmy’s past who could provide the slightest information. Not that there were many people to choose from—Jimmy’s background seemed void of typical relationships. No ex-bosses or co-workers who had anything to say, no wife or kids, and not much in the way of relatives, except for a stepmother who wouldn’t return his call, and an uncle in prison.

Lou scoured public databases, searching for evidence of real-estate transactions, and came up empty. With the social security number John had provided, he ran Jimmy’s credit report, a utility company trace, and a DMV check. Nothing in these records offered any direction as to his whereabouts.

After calling Jimmy’s cell number and failing to connect a dozen times, Lou suspected the phone was either dead or lost. But it was also possible Jimmy was outside the cellular provider’s signal range, maybe even outside the country.

Running out of options, Lou called a company that could triangulate a cell phone signal to within fifty feet, as long as the phone was powered on. He asked them to try connecting to Jimmy’s line daily until he instructed otherwise. Lou sighed when he hung up. He knew telephone privacy legislation had recently been passed, and it would soon be a felony to sell information related to particular services offered by a phone company. Rather than relying on methods that were both expensive and soon to be illegal, Lou would have preferred using other means. But Jimmy Homestead was not a typical case.