Dying for the Highlife (21 page)

“Sounds like he’s a man of irrepressible charm. What else?”

“San Jose PD nailed him a couple years ago on an aggravated assault charge involving his girlfriend. He did six months in the local clink for that.”

“Anything specific about cocaine trafficking on either of them?”

“Let’s see—the only mention is the Vietnamese thing. It was apparently a battle over drug-dealing turf. Pot, crystal meth, coke—the usual.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Lou said. He hung up and turned to his notebook computer and updated the case document he’d been compiling. The connection between Sanzini and Hector Escobar was interesting, but without a link to Sheila Majorie, it was meaningless. He left the hotel and climbed into his SUV. The morning fog was lifting, but the skies were still a pallid white when Lou pulled into the parking lot of Sheila’s apartment complex. He spotted Sheila’s Toyota this time, and after parking nearby, he walked through the light mist and found her unit, which was on the first floor and plainly visible from the parking lot. He returned to his car, and at 11:30 followed her to the beauty salon where she worked.

Lou watched the salon from his car during her entire eight-hour shift, relieving himself in a plastic jug when necessary. When she left at eight, he followed her home and staked out her apartment until the lights went out at midnight. In the morning he returned and again followed her to work. When her shift was over, he followed her home and waited until her apartment went dark before leaving.

The next two days were identical to the previous two. Sheila Majorie’s life consisted of waking up, going to work, and coming home. The most exciting thing she did was stop at the drug store. There was not the slightest indication of anything that tied her to anyone involved in drug dealing. Though he was using up a lot of favors, Lou again called Tommy McCoy and asked him to pull her police file. It came back clean; not even a parking ticket.

As a last resort, Lou followed her to the beauty salon the next day and walked in when they opened at noon. Sheila was wearing black jeans and a cream-colored sweater that clung to her curves. Her hair was in a bun, her fingernails painted red. Within a minute Lou was seated in a leather barber’s chair, and she was assessing his hair.

“Thin out the sides with your number three and take no more than a quarter inch off the top,” he said.

She lowered the seat and rested the back of his head in a sink where hot water was running, and began shampooing his hair. “You’re very lucky your hair is so full,” she said.

“Tell me about it. I’m surprised I’m not bald by now with the grief my kids put me through.” Lou stared up at Sheila’s bosom as she massaged his scalp.

“Like my daughter. I put her through college, and it cost me a fortune. She just graduated, but instead of going to work, she ran off with her boyfriend.”

“You don’t like him?” Sheila asked, her palms rubbing his temples.

“I don’t know him; that’s what bugs me. I’ve only met him once.”

Sheila rinsed his hair, then lifted his head and wrapped it in a towel.

“He’s Mexican, and he’s covered in tattoos,” Lou said. “I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a fashion statement, or what.”

“Tattoos
are
fashionable these days.”

“Really? Do you have one?”

“I’ll never tell.”

“My sister thinks he’s in a gang, like the Mexican Mafia,” Lou said, his face serious again. “You ever hear of anything so crazy?”

She dried his hair and began clipping. The salon was mostly empty, and they were in a semiprivate nook. Her perfume was vaguely tropical, and when she moved around him, her hip brushed his shoulder.

“The world’s a crazy place,” she said, and he waited for her to say more, but she had put down her scissors and was looking through her drawer for the right attachment to her electric trimmer.

“Would you be concerned if you were me?” Lou asked.

“I can’t really say,” she said.

When she was finished, Lou admired her work in the mirror.

“Very nicely done,” he said, and handed her an extra ten, their hands touching.

“By the way, do you have plans for dinner tonight?” he asked.

“You’re sweet, but sorry, I never date customers.”

“That’s a shame,” Lou said, and walked out of the salon into the bland, overcast day. “A damn shame,” he muttered, as he clicked his seat belt and headed toward the freeway leading back to South Lake Tahoe.

T
he Carson City Library occupied a corner a block off the main drag. The faded brick structure was surrounded by maple and ash trees, but fall had come early this year, and the branches overhead were bare and colorless. I stood inside looking out the window at a group of teenagers playing basketball in the adjacent school yard. A shirtless kid with brown skin sank a nice jump shot. It started to rain, but they played on. Eventually Cody waved at me, and I walked back to where he sat behind my laptop.

“Any luck calling Jimmy?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Still goes straight to voice mail.”

“I e-mailed my hacker buddy. He’ll let me know when Jimmy gets online again, and maybe he can trace the IP address.”

“I tried to get John Homestead’s cell number,” I said. “No luck. You have any friends left at San Jose PD who would call the phone company for us?”

Cody smiled. “Not a chance.

I sighed and sat in the chair next to him.

“I guess we could stake out the repair garage,” he said.

“I suppose that’s an option.”

“Yeah, but why bother? Your device will let us know when the Lamborghini’s on the road again. Let’s go kill some time.”

Which of course meant finding the nearest bar. I looked at my watch. “It’s noon somewhere, Dirt,” Cody said.

We walked into a nameless joint with a horseshoe-shaped bar and slot machines lining the walls. The early day crowd was rife with missing teeth and wino breath. A dense brume of cigarette smoke hung above the drinkers, like a radioactive cloud. When we sat, a middle-aged woman with a plaid shirt and pigtails shuffled over to me. Her face was weathered beyond her years, her teeth and gums dark when she spoke.

“Stay away from the slots in this dump,” she said.

The bartender raised his voice, and she wandered away, muttering a steam of babble about an unjust and piss-poor world. Cody and I drank up and split.

“I’ve been to funerals that were a better time than that shithole,” he said.

“Let’s go get some lunch,” I said. But before we made it through the next light my cell rang. It was one of the attorneys I had solicited earlier in the week.

“My client’s husband is leaving tomorrow on a business trip to Salt Lake City,” she said. “She suspects he has some extracurricular activities arranged. As we discussed, the more incriminating the photos, the better.”

I pulled over and jotted down the necessary details. Then I snapped my phone shut and hung a U-turn.

“What’s up?” Cody said.

“You said you wanted to kill some time. How about putting Jimmy on the back burner for a few days?”

“Why?”

“I got a paying gig. You up for a road trip?”

“Where to, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Utah, for a couple days.”

“That’s a hell of a road trip. You sure you want to leave town?”

“I need the money.”

Cody shrugged. “I guess we can track down Jimmy when we get back.”

“Sometimes a little benign neglect is a good thing,” I said.

“Or not,” Cody replied, “but what do I know?”

• • •

By midafternoon we were heading eastbound on Highway 80. Four hundred miles of high desert lay ahead, the land parched and cold under a pale blue sky banked with faint clouds. Vast fields of sagebrush and dry grass lined the road and stretched as far as the eye could see. The monotony of the flat terrain was occasionally broken by a random pinyon or bristlecone pine, but otherwise the country was featureless.

“Empty territory,” I said.

“Empty, and dry too. How far until the next truck stop?” Cody said.

“Lovelock is an hour away. Tell your liver it will get a break until then.”

“Damn. We should have picked up beer in Reno.”

East of Winnemucca we dropped into a shallow valley and began climbing a short grade. The highway sliced through the rock-strewn pastures, the landscape jagged with treeless bluffs and mesas that jutted from the earth’s crust like massive burial mounds. We crossed a short bridge and passed over a gully that fell away into a steep canyon, the walls serrated and strangely uniform, as if carved by a mason to the gods. In the distance, a deeply shadowed ridge rose into the gray clouds along the northern horizon. Cody gave up trying to find a radio station with decent reception and tossed his empty beer can into the backseat.

“Let’s stop at Elko for dinner,” he said.

“Yeah, my ass is about wore out. Crack me another beer, would you?”

We rolled into Elko in time to see the last of the sunset, the low clouds lit with purple fire, the sky above florescent and twinkling with starlight. Halfway down the main drag, we stopped at the Pioneer Hotel and Saloon. Inside, the old lounge was crowded with a party of some sort. We elbowed our way to the bar and ordered steaks and whiskey.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked the bartender.

“It’s our annual arts festival. We get poets, musicians, and painters from all over the place.”

A couple of whiskeys later, I felt myself crossing the line from a slight buzz to a pleasant drunk. I struck up a conversation with a pretty black-haired woman in a leather jacket who was trying to order a drink. We talked for a while before I realized Cody was no longer at the bar. I heard a commotion and spotted him at a table with a group of people, telling what was apparently an uproarious story. A buxom redhead wearing a frilly dress clung to his arm. Her eyes had an alcoholic shine and her exaggerated expressions made me think of a circus clown.

“Your friend?” the brunette asked me.

“For as long as I can remember.”

“He better watch out for that fire crotch. She’s screwed everything with pants in this town.”

“My god, do you think I should warn him?”

“Oh, shut up.”

Somehow we ended up at a house a few miles outside of town. It was a large, ranch-style spread built on a lot surrounded by nothing but open plains. The interior was done in polished woods, except for a massive stone fireplace that covered an entire wall. Full-length windows looked out over a backyard party, complete with heat lamps, a side of beef, beer kegs, and a hired bartender. Beyond the yard, miles of grazing pasture lay under the moonlit sky.

In my blur of drunkenness, I was perplexed at the bizarre mix of people gathered at the place. A woman about seventy was reading poetry in one room to ten college-aged kids who listened in absolute silence. In another room, a man played the banjo and harmonica and sang about a cattle drive. In the main room, a writer who wrote a book I had read years ago began reading passages from his new novel in front of the roaring fireplace. His audience became distracted when a topless female with a six-foot snake wrapped around her torso walked in the front door. The writer hurried outside to the bar and spent the remainder of the night there.

All the while, folks dressed as if attending a Renaissance fair roamed about, sipping wine and discussing the western art murals that covered the walls. Searching for a bathroom, I opened the door to a bedroom where a half dozen men huddled over a mirror lined with cocaine. Outside, speakers blared ZZ Top, and at least twenty people were dancing on the patio, gyrating and pumping as if they hoped an orgy would break out. I spotted Cody near the roasting pit, holding a knife, cutting huge slices of rare beef and eating with his bare hands. He was wearing a rawhide leather coat with fringes that someone must have given him.

“I guess we’re not gonna make it to Salt Lake tonight,” I said.

He looked at me in surprise, then grinned, his teeth bloody. “Make it to where?”

• • •

When I woke the next morning, I had no idea where I was. Indoors, fortunately. In bed, in a strange room. And still drunk. I sat up and smelled perfume. Fragments of the night began to dance around in my head, but I wasn’t quite sure until the black-haired lady I’d met early in the evening walked in stark naked and parked her shapely ass next to me.

“Coffee, tea, or me?” she said.

“How about a Bloody,” I croaked. “Or if that’s too much to ask, whiskey will do.”

“Take these first,” she said, handing me a fistful of pills and a glass of water. “Then take a shower, cowboy, and I’ll bring you further medication.” I groaned and made my way into the bathroom, and a minute later, her hand reached through the shower curtain and handed me a Bloody Mary, complete with a celery stick.

“You are a rare woman,” I said, guzzling half the drink as hot water pounded on my back. I wondered what time it was. The thought was quickly lost when I stepped out of the shower into a soft towel she held. “Don’t even think about leaving yet,” she said, dropping to her knees. Then she led me to the bed and made me regret my poor memory, but she made damn sure I’d remember the morning. I finally disengaged from her limbs an hour later and found my truck beached on the sidewalk in front of her place. She gave me directions to the house where the party had been held, and promised to visit the next time she came west. The idea brought a happy anticipation to my chest, even made me feel a bit giddy, but maybe that was just the booze.

• • •

Finding Cody, on the other hand, didn’t go so smoothly. I knocked on the front door to the ranch house, and when no one answered, I turned the unlocked doorknob and went in. Leftovers were scattered about, asleep on couches, and more were in the bedrooms I peeked into, but Cody was nowhere to be found. Out in the backyard two men smoked and sucked on drinks. I assumed they’d pulled a sunrise show, up all night on cocaine, and were trying to consume enough liquor to come down and pass out. I wandered out to a large barn I hadn’t noticed the night before. Frost coated the prairie, and a cold wind had kicked up. I was anxious to get on the road.