Dying for the Highlife (7 page)

“Maybe I know something about where he is.”

“Then you best start talking, boy,” he growled.

“Tell me his name and why you’re looking for him.”

“Jimmy Homestead,” Sanzini said. “Now tell me where he is, and maybe I won’t kick your ass.”

I looked over at the man called Rancour, who sat on his bike. He shrugged and smiled.

“See you later,” I said and began walking back to my rig. A moment later I heard gravel spitting beneath shoes as Sanzini came after me. I turned in time to see he was limping badly. He must have taken a good shot to the thigh from the billy club. He lunged at me and threw an awkward right cross that I easily sidestepped. Trying to fistfight with a bad leg is usually a losing proposition.

I chopped him across the back of the neck with the meat of my fist and kicked him hard in the ass, hard enough to leave what I knew would be an ugly bruise to go along with the one on his upper leg. The blows sent him sprawling. I continued toward my truck.

But like most low-life dumb-asses, Sanzini wasn’t smart enough to know when to quit. He rushed me again, and I turned in time to box him. We squared off, and when he lost his balance on his hurt leg, I drilled him with two good left jabs to the face. He spit a stream of bloody saliva at my feet and put his head down and tried to tackle me, but I stopped him with a solid right uppercut and felt my knuckles split against his teeth. Busting up my hands on this meathead pissed me off. But I gave him one more chance.

“Go home,” I said.

He came at me again.

I ducked his roundhouse and hit him with a straight right to the solar plexus. When he keeled over, I kicked him between the eyes with the toe of my boot. His body flipped back like a fish out of water, and he thudded into the gravel and lay still.

I watched the scene unfold in my rearview mirror as I idled away. Rancour ran over to Sanzini and stripped the leather coat from his body. Then the man with the billy club and the bartender came outside, and Rancour started his Honda and rode after me.

A
t a hundred miles per hour, the 1982 Ford LTD was dangerously unstable. The nearly bald tires buzzed loudly against the pavement, the motor knocked and whined, and the chassis jolted at the slightest bump in the road. The man behind the wheel grinned like a maniac, a cigar clamped between his teeth, his mirrored flip-up sunglasses reflecting the sun.

John Homestead hadn’t felt this alive in years. He used to go on road trips like this when he was a kid, party trips on the open highway, where roadhouse beers and willing women always seemed just a few miles away. That was when he was young, back when money wasn’t a concern, and his natural good looks attracted more women than he knew what to do with.

Maybe those days weren’t just a sad memory, he thought, as he popped another couple of diet pills and washed them back with a slug of gin. Join a gym, lose fifty pounds, move out of his dump into a classy condo. Was it possible? Hell, yes. With a couple million to back him up, anything was possible. Fifty wasn’t too old to enjoy the good life. He eased up a bit on the gas pedal as he approached the speed traps outside Placerville, while he imagined the details of what his future might hold in store.

Tracking down his son had been easy. As a young man, Jimmy always had an affinity for the Lake Tahoe area, as he loved gambling and whores. John never quite understood Jimmy’s inclination toward prostitutes. Jimmy was always getting laid and had plenty of girlfriends. He certainly didn’t have to pay for it. But that was a long time ago.

It took John no longer than fifteen minutes to dial the Tahoe casino hotels and find that Jimmy was staying at Harrah’s. Apparently, after all these years, Jimmy’s habits hadn’t changed. John was quite pleased with his investigative work, but felt his buzz subside as his thoughts returned to the fact that Jimmy had made no effort to contact him after winning the Lotto. He chased the bad vibes away with another swallow of gin and concentrated on thinking positively. But in the back of his mind, he knew the gun in the glove box was there for a reason.

There was a line at the reservation counter when John arrived at Harrah’s, so he wandered the casino for a while, working out the kinks in his legs and back from the long drive. He thought a few quick hands of blackjack might help him relax, but he decided otherwise when he saw the minimum at the twenty-one tables was ten bucks a hand. When he turned from the tables, he saw a woman in a fur coat walking away through the crowds. He caught a glimpse of her profile and stood dumbfounded.

Was he losing his mind? No, he wasn’t that far gone. It was his ex-wife, Sheila. God, even after all these years she hadn’t changed much, she was still a knockout. His eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, were they? No, dammit, that was Sheila—you don’t see beautiful vixens like her very often. John’s mind was fuzzy from the booze and pills, but he was sure it was her. What the hell was
she
doing here?

The obvious slowly dawned on him. It was no coincidence. She must be here with Jimmy. How the hell could that be? Sheila hadn’t had any contact with Jimmy after their divorce, at least not that John knew of. When Sheila left him, it was with a flourish of hatred directed not only at John, but at everyone in his family. She had made a clean break, and John thought he would never see her again.

After all this time, he still remembered her wrath. John knew he hadn’t been the greatest of husbands, but she wasn’t perfect either. Toward the end, he had accused her of sleeping with a younger man. Her response was one he never forgot. She looked him straight in the eye, very calmly, and said, “So?” And then she smiled, a bitchy little grin that cut right through him and made him feel as insignificant as an ant.

Thank god that’s over with, he thought, feeling a sense of relief she was out of his life. It didn’t matter that she was the greatest lover he’d ever had, a truly unique woman in bed. He still became aroused when he thought of their lovemaking, of her sheer sexual prowess. But eventually he’d realized she used her sexuality to control men. At her core, she knew how badly men wanted her, and how easy it was to get the so-called stronger sex to do whatever she wanted. This was his strongest and most enduring recollection of her. He could almost forgive her for it; imagine how easy life could be with that power. Still, to use people like she did, you had to have a dark place in your heart.

John started after Sheila, but the crowds of gamblers were thick, and he wasn’t a nimble man. He soon lost sight of her, and a wave of dizziness overcame him. He sat down heavily on a bench in a quiet hallway. Christ, he was out of shape. He felt a pang of shame when it occurred to him how bad he looked compared to his ex-wife, who seemed as attractive as ever.

After a few minutes his head cleared, and he made his way back to the reservation counter.

“I’m sorry, there’s no one named Jimmy Homestead staying here,” the clerk said.

“But, he was here yesterday,” John said.

“He must have checked out.”

“How about Sheila Homestead? I’d like to leave a message for her.”

The keyboard clicked briefly.

“No Sheila Homestead on record.”

“Try Sheila Majorie.”

Click, click, click. “No record of her either.”

John walked away slowly and found an empty bar where he could think. He hadn’t considered what he’d do if Jimmy wasn’t at Harrah’s. Nor had he anticipated seeing his ex-wife at the casino. He forced thoughts of her aside for the moment, and concentrated on where Jimmy might be.

His son, with all those millions of dollars. Enough money to buy anything, be anywhere, be anyone. Where would he go? Did the fact he had checked out of Harrah’s mean he was leaving the Tahoe area? Or had he just decided on a different hotel? At this moment he could be checking into the fanciest suite at any hotel in the area. Or maybe he was on the road, driving a fancy new car to who knows where. Maybe to an airport.

Christ, this was getting him nowhere, John mused. He needed an angle.

Okay, what about Sheila being here? What a bizarre day it was turning out to be. Drive up to Tahoe to find your son, and find your wicked ex-wife instead. She had to be here because she was with Jimmy, right? But she hadn’t stayed at Harrah’s, unless…oh god, no. She couldn’t have been sharing the same room with Jimmy, could she? A flood of dreaded emotions from a buried place surged to the forefront of his thoughts. John closed his eyes and pressed his temples. You have no way of knowing if it ever happened, he told himself. And it’s foolish to contemplate if they are sleeping together now. It’s a ridiculous suspicion. Shut it out, think logically.

An hour later, John found himself pacing along a wooded trail that led from the casino to the sandy shores of Lake Tahoe. Fortunately he’d brought his coat, because it had grown dark and cold. How long had he walked? A mile? Three miles? His legs were tired and his back ached. But the walk had served its purpose; his mind was at ease, and he had drawn what he felt were logical conclusions:

     
1. Sheila likely had already found Jimmy, and had either tapped into his money, or was in the process of doing so.

     
2. If she hadn’t already found him, she was definitely trying to, for the obvious purpose of getting her hands on his money.

     
3. Sheila’s agenda almost certainly would create some conflict with his own.

     
4. Finding Jimmy quickly was key. Sheila could influence Jimmy against him.

     
5. Finding Jimmy would require some advanced people-tracking skills, something John lacked.

By the time John hiked back to his car he was exhausted and hungry. He bought a bag of fast food, found a cheap hotel near the California-Nevada state line, and went to bed. Tomorrow would be a taxing day, and he wanted to be well rested.

I
t was one in the morning when Mort finally lay down to sleep in the downtown Sacramento hotel room. He had spent the evening applying his most logical and creative thinking to a plan to seize his nephew’s lottery winnings. He didn’t quit until he felt satisfied the plan covered every unexpected twist he could imagine. It was meticulous and exhausting work, but it was a process necessary to succeed in business, whether legitimate or otherwise. The primary goal in lawful business was to make an honest profit. The end game in an illegal enterprise was to steal and not get caught. The latter required especially concise, rational planning, because denial of personal freedom was the penalty for failure. Mort’s previous enterprise ended disastrously when he ignored certain fundamentals. This time, Mort planned painstakingly. He did not intend to return to prison.

His plan was broken down into three primary elements:

     
1. Locate and secure Jimmy Homestead.

     
2. Extract and secure funds.

     
3. Get away safely.

As an experienced criminal, Mort realized the challenges he was facing. Finding Jimmy would be the easiest part, he assumed. Arranging the transfer of millions into his hands would be considerably more difficult. Vanishing with the money would be equally tricky. To manage these phases, Mort broke down each into three analytical subsets: strategy, methodology, and tactics.

The strategy to locate Jimmy was simple. First, check building permits and real estate transactions. It was likely Jimmy would spend part of his fortune on a fancy home. The method to access this data required a trip to the city library, or city hall if necessary, to check public records. The tactical execution of this was slightly challenging because Mort’s goal was to maintain total anonymity. Any activity creating a trail back to him must be avoided. But finding Jimmy would require talking to people, and that meant there would be links that could result in Mort being identified.

The next morning Mort walked two miles to a theatrical outfitting shop running early Halloween ads in the newspaper. In a cash transaction, he bought a tweed cap, a professional-quality reddish-gray beard complete with bushy eyebrow kit, and an apparatus that attached to his torso with suspenders, giving him the appearance of a man with a bulky midsection and a large rear end. He then took the city transit bus to a discount store, where he found a pair of yellow-tinted, wire-rimmed spectacles that obscured his greenish eyes. Next, a pair of pants, a belt, and a button-down shirt to fit his new physique. As a finishing touch, he found a used pipe reeking of tobacco at a thrift shop.

Thus attired, Mort spent the afternoon at the library and city hall, searching real estate records for Jimmy Homestead. But the fruits of his labor were elusive, and he returned to his hotel that evening empty-handed. Evidently, Jimmy had not moved forward with any real estate plans in California. Mort accepted the situation with even-keeled stoicism. His criminal plan was not one born out of laziness and aversion to work. Setbacks were to be dealt with intellectually and rationally. Lack of patience was a habit of failed criminals.

Mort checked out of his hotel the following morning and took the first Greyhound bus to Reno. The hundred-and-twenty-mile trip took four hot, gritty hours. By sundown Mort had finished checking the Nevada State real estate records. There was no record of Jimmy Homestead. Deep in his gut, he felt a flicker of irritation. He swallowed the emotion and concentrated on thinking logically. Anger was counterproductive—until it could be applied as a means to an end.

That evening Mort decided to begin executing a second strategy to locate his target. The real estate idea would be scuttled—it wasn’t feasible to search every state for Jimmy Homestead. He had assumed Jimmy would buy a home in California, but he could have selected any state—Hawaii, Florida, it was impossible to predict. So it was time for plan B.

Now staying at a sprawling, inexpensive chain hotel in Reno, Mort began calling private investigation and security firms. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. He got the response he needed on his third call.