Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13) (32 page)

FIFTY-ONE

We got in the Jeep and drove away, turning onto Venice Drive and heading east.

The night was cold, and there was a mist coming off the canals. The Keys’ houses were largely dark, empty vacation homes that would go unused by owners and renters alike until summer was upon us in July. The streets were empty as well, with none of the parked cars that spilled out of driveways and onto the streets on a normal summer night. The only one I drove by at the shoulder was a Fiat 500, just like the one Street and I had rented in Italy. I cruised on past, thinking about things Italian. Italian influence on America was pervasive. We ate Italian food, we wore Italian clothes, we drank Italian wine, we celebrated Italian movie stars, Italian art, Italian sports cars, Italian singers. Like Frank Sinatra.

It seemed that ever since Bruno Valenti told us about selling the Blue Fire Diamond to Sinatra, I kept bumping into people who celebrated Sinatra. People who’d seen Sinatra perform. People who’d watched his movies. People who collected Sinatra memorabilia. People who listened to his music. Like Vince Russo. Like the guy at the city yard who had Sinatra on his boombox. What was his name? Emilio. Wasn’t Emilio also an Italian name? I’d thought he was Hispanic. But maybe he was Sicilian. Maybe the best way to disguise an Italian accent was to cover it with a manufactured Hispanic accent...

I slowed, turned around, drove back and stopped near the Fiat. It was parked near a canal. Like the canal near Vince’s house, it would be crowded come summer. But now, this one had just a few floating docks and no boats.

But it could have held a boat an hour ago. And Brann Crosen had described Emilio as a guy who could make any engine run. Maybe even when he didn’t have an ignition key.

I pulled out and sped back to Vince’s street, slowed to a quiet stop some distance from Vince’s house, got out with Spot, and we trotted through the dark.

The house was mostly dark. Vince had turned off his lights. But there seemed to be a glow of light on the side with the canal. I held Spot’s collar as I went around the side of the house. The winter’s blanket of snow had melted. The fresh snow of the last day was soft. We could walk quietly without crunching through crusted snow.

The glow of light was coming through the drapes on the windows that faced the canal. I heard voices. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could hear the stress, the tension, the fear.

Nearby, was Vince’s floating dock. Unlike earlier, there was a boat tied to one of the posts at the end of the dock, its bow facing the lake.

Spot’s ears were focused, his eyes searching, nostrils flexing. I touched my finger across the top of Spot’s nose, a signal to be silent. I wanted to rush in, break down a door, but I paused, considering my options.

I walked softly down the ramp to the dock.

The boat was a low profile speedboat with an outboard engine. The cockpit was small, protected from the wind by a tiny windshield.

“Spot, stay,” I whispered, then stepped into the boat. It rocked and bumped noisily against the dock. I took out my penlight, shielded the rim of the light and turned it on. The boat contained the usual gear. Life jackets shoved under the bow deck. Dock bumpers in the side stowage just below the gunnel. A small anchor tucked into a stern bin.

The boat was moored by a single line at the stern. I saw another long line looped around a cleat on the bow. One of the ends ran back along the side of the boat and into the stowage at the stern. The other lay loose on the bow and was long enough to reach a dock post. I dropped it over the post with a running bowline knot. There was still some slack in the line, so I pushed it down onto the surface of the water so it would not be too obvious. If one of the men in Vince’s house tried to make a fast escape and only unhitched the rear mooring line, he’d be in for a surprise as he tried to drive off and discovered that the boat was still lashed to the dock.

When I was back out of the boat, the line was noticeable even in the dim light from distant house lights across the canal. But perhaps the boat’s operator wouldn’t notice, because he would assume that the boat was as he had left it.

Spot and I tiptoed up the dock ramp and over to the windows. The voices were louder, angry. I thought I heard Vince say, “I told you, I don’t know!”

I gently put my hand on the handle of the sliding glass door.

It was locked.

There was a small patio. At the outer two corners were large ceramic planters, empty now, waiting for summer flowers that were still two months off.

I did a test lift on one. It was nearly as heavy as the bronze statue I used to stop Mario Montana on his scooter at the church in Roccatederighi in Tuscany.

“Okay, Spot,” I whispered in his ear in a tone that would prepare him for action.

I bent my knees, gripped the planter, and lifted it up. I gave it a backswing, then let it fly toward one of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

It was like an explosion as the planter crashed through window and blinds. The tempered glass collapsed all at once. I put my arm out to sweep the blinds aside, and I ran through into Vince’s living room. Spot was at my side.

There were three men, all showing shock at what had just happened. All turned to stare.

Emilio from the city yard was on the left. His arm was up, pointing, telling the others what to do.

Brann Crosen was in the center of the room. His right hand and arm were in a splint, the result of Adam Simms crushing it with his hands. In Crosen’s left hand was a large knife, a silent weapon that wouldn’t alert neighbors to mayhem. Standing in front of him was Vince, trying to work a key into the lock of the glass display case that held the Sinatra sculptures.

“Spot!” I yelled as much to unnerve the men as to communicate to Spot. “Take the suspect! Take him down!” I dropped my lower arm in front of Spot’s face and pointed toward Crosen.

Crosen was fast. He grabbed Vince and spun him around as a shield against Spot. Crosen held the knife against Vince’s neck.

But dogs don’t respond to threats. Spot jumped up, hitting Vince in the chest with his paws. Both Vince and Crosen toppled over backward.

Crosen rolled, got his left hand out, knife up toward Spot. But Spot was faster. His jaws closed on Crosen’s hand, biting down. Crosen screamed as his hand was crushed against the knife handle enclosed in his grip. He tried to jerk away from Spot. But a dog’s natural reaction to resistance is to bite harder. Crosen screamed louder.

I pulled Vince to his feet as I turned toward Emilio.

“I’m so sorry,” Vince said, his voice shaking. “Ruby had gone outside, and this man appeared at my window, knife to Ruby’s neck. I couldn’t let him butcher her. I had to open the door.”

Emilio picked up a chair and threw it at me. There was no time to duck, but I got my arm up. The chair knocked me back onto the couch. Emilio came at me. I rolled to the floor and reached out my leg to trip him. He fell. I leaped on top of him, pinning him to the floor. I tugged at his arm, trying to jerk it behind his back. But Emilio was very strong. He twisted sideways and swung back with an elbow punch that grazed my jaw. He got his knees up and kicked out, pushing off the couch, driving himself out from underneath me.

I jumped to my feet. But as I turned toward him, Emilio was already up, in the martial arts position used by Crosen and his men against Adam Simms. Emilio was bouncing on his toes.

“Good move, Emilio. Or is it Antonio Scozzari?” I said, as I circled, my fists up. “From the L.A. crime family. Friend of Mario Montana in Tuscany. Co-conspirator in chasing down the Blue Fire of Florence. Murderer of how many people? Two with a rotary plow? One with a rifle? More that we don’t know about?” I danced left, then right.

“Each death was a pleasure,” he said in perfect English. His lips were pulled back in a sneer.

“You’re done now,” I said. “And don’t even think about abandoning Crosen. I’ve booby-trapped your boat.”

Emilio/Scozzari blew air, trying to pump oxygen, sounding more like a hissing cat than a fighter. He feinted, snapped a punch that touched my shoulder, feinted again.

I’m not a boxer, and I don’t know karate. What I do know is the fighting techniques that are taught to cops, a collection of blocks, holds, and punches mixed with some very effective dirty tricks.

Most fighters expect you to trade blows with them or move away. The pros know close fighting techniques, but they don’t expect anyone but a pro to get close.

So I snapped a distracting kick toward his knee. As he danced back, I put my fists tight to my forehead, bent down, and charged forward, my head moving toward his chest. He punched twice in fast succession, but my arms blocked my face. He backed away as I pushed him, my head to his chest. I swept my hands out and up, my forearms pushing against his biceps. Then I hooked my hands over his triceps, trapping his arms in a clinch.

He struggled as I slipped around under his left arm, and locked onto him from behind.

He tried to stomp my foot but missed as I snaked my arm around his neck from behind and put a carotid lock on him.

The trick with any carotid restraint is to lift up and squeeze your opponent’s neck from the sides, shutting off blood to his brain but without collapsing his trachea, which has the nasty habit of killing the suspect.

Maybe I didn’t get enough pinch.

Emilio/Scozzari jerked up both arms as if to box my ears. Knuckles struck my temple, jarring my head. I still had my right arm around his neck, so I stabbed my left thumb toward his eye. It felt like I caught the edge of his orbit, my thumbnail gouging the bone as my thumb slid off into the flesh between eyeball and socket.

Scozzari made a guttural yell and charged backward, pushing against me. The middle of my back struck the fireplace mantle, hard stone contacting vertebrae with a brutal blow. Electric pain shot down my back, loosening my grip on his neck.

He twisted, pulled away, ran for the broken window, and leaped outside.

I staggered away from the fireplace, stumbled toward the door and looked outside.

Scozzari was already at the boat. As I ran after him, he unhooked the stern mooring line, leaped into the cockpit, started the engine, and threw the gear lever all the way to fast forward.

The outboard engine roared, and the boat raced ahead.

What occurred next happened so quickly that it was difficult to comprehend the details.

The line that was tied from the bow cleat to the dock post stretched out tight. The cleat ripped out of the boat. The other end of the line that went back along the boat was attached to the anchor in the stern. As the boat raced forward, the line that arced from the dock post to the anchor was pulled back. It caught Scozzari on the front of his neck. Unfortunately, his instinct was not to jerk the speed lever to neutral, but to simply raise his hands to the line at his neck.

The line pulled tighter. The anchor leaped up from the stern, swung wildly through the air behind Scozzari’s back, and hooked itself over the line that stretched out to the dock post. It formed a loop around Scozzari’s neck.

Scozzari was jerked out of the speedboat. It was as violent as the drop from a tall gallows.

I turned back to the living room.

Vince was standing in a corner, his eyes wide with fear. Crosen was still on the floor. Spot still held Crosen’s hand and the enclosed knife handle in his mouth. The large, shiny blade of the knife stuck up in the air.

I put my hiking boot on Crosen’s neck, pressing down hard enough to make him wonder if I would kill him at that very moment. I bent over and took hold of Crosen’s wrist.

“Good boy, Spot. Let go. C’mon boy, let go.”

Spot opened his jaws. Crosen’s hand was mangled, misshapen, and bloody. It flopped to the floor. Crosen made a small scream. It looked like he was crying, tears pooling around the eyeliner tattoos. I removed the knife and tossed it some distance away.

I kept my foot on Crosen’s neck as I called 911.

FIFTY-TWO

Three hours later, when I was done speaking to Mallory and his officers, I drove up to the safe house to tell Adam that we’d caught Crosen and his boss in crime, Antonio Scozzari.

Unlike the Keys, the high-elevation neighborhood north of Kingsbury Grade had gotten another foot of snow. The snow walls on the streets were still very tall.

Two blocks before I got to the safe house, I saw Adam Simms’s pickup stuck in a snowbank. He’d slid in the turn where one narrow road split off from another. Under his tires, the ice was polished from ineffective spinning of his wheels. I pulled over and got out. Using my penlight, I could see that the pickup was empty. Shuffling boot prints led from the truck down the wrong road, away from the safe house. It must have been a bad day.

I let Spot out, and we followed the prints into the dark, thankful that the deep snow would prevent Adam from wandering into the forest. Spot instinctively sensed that the fresh boot prints in the snow were out of place and that he should follow them. He trotted ahead of me, into the dark.

The night air was cold and crisp, almost like back in mid-winter. To the east, the lights of Carson Valley spread out before me, 3400 feet below. It was a spectacular vista. To the west lay Lake Tahoe, a black plate almost 200 square miles large surrounded by mountains that were still cloaked in a heavy snowpack.

There was a mist of ice in the air, formed by a frozen precipitate of moisture as the night grew colder and water vapor condensed out of the air.

My concern for Adam ratcheted up as I went farther down the dark road. Spot had disappeared into the darkness in front of me. I wasn’t sure where the road led, but my recollection was that the road was a dead end, kept clear of snow just to allow the plows a place to turn around.

The boot prints ambled in a confused way, at one point veering over to the snow wall, and at another, tracing a loop. I was shining my feeble penlight beam farther down the road when a distant engine revved. The sound rumbled like a big truck and then morphed into a giant roar behind me. As I turned to look, a rotary plow came into view around a distant corner. A surfeit of flashing strobes and flood lights and directional spotlights lit up the forest. With the accompanying roar, it felt like some kind of shock-and-awe invasion.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, following seemingly innocent footprints designed to lead the fool into a trap.

The realization that the rotary was coming after me hit hard, and it made my breath short. I thought of running back toward the rotary plow to try to slip by its side. But the road was narrow, and there was no promise I could escape past the wide auger housing.

In the other direction, where boot prints had been put to fool me, there was lots of room. I’d easily be able find a place to climb a snow wall and escape. I began running. After a dozen steps, I glanced behind to check if the machine was still coming down the plowed road.

It was already well into the narrow section of road. Definitely coming after me.

The machine dominated the landscape with an assault of light and roar. The sound shook my chest. I looked away. The floods and strobes created an ominous flashing in the cloud of icy mist that surrounded me.

The machine pursuing me had almost two thousand horsepower in its two engines, and both seemed throttled up all the way. Its auger was a wheel of giant spinning teeth, carbon tipped and sharpened, more powerful than a Great White shark or a killer whale.

The psychological component of defeat is stronger than the physical. I hadn’t run far, so my legs had plenty of physical strength left. But with its flashing lights and crushing roar, the rotary plow seemed like a satanic spirit, a pervasive evil black magic that crippled my flight, slowing my steps, just like what happens to a rabbit when a coyote is about to grab it. I sensed that my death was inevitable, and that made my running footsteps weak.

I told myself it was still just a machine. The evil resided with the operator, a faceless, nameless entity behind black glass. Terror was like a punch in my gut. I looked back toward the dark black plate of the windshield and tried to see past flood lights. There was no movement or shape to perceive, no instrument lights reflected in eyeglasses, no glow of cigarette or cigar, no tooth shine revealing the hideous grin of sadistic torture. The flood lights blinded me. All I could see and hear was a giant snow blowing monster that was coming to chew me into pieces and spit them out into the forest.

I turned away and refocused on running. Pump the legs, pound the feet, swing the arms. Spot saw me run toward him, so he trotted ahead at a faster pace, not yet realizing that we were in danger.

The road curved around to the right. I followed the turn and saw that it was in fact a dead end. It was surrounded on all sides with snow walls. But they were not especially tall, so I knew that we could get up and over them to escape. I ran hard toward the enclosing snow walls, hoping that my pace was much faster than the rotary chasing me. Gaining some distance on the machine was a relief. I could escape into the forest and work my way back to my Jeep.

Without breaking stride, I jumped up onto the four-foot snow wall. Spot jumped up next to me. The snow was firm, and we sank in only a few inches. I took two running steps across the top of the snow wall, then broke through crust and fell into the snow up to my waist. I realized that the firm snow wall was the berm that had  been pushed up by the road grader. Moving just a few feet back from the street meant I was off the berm and into the soft unbroken snow behind it.

The monster roared louder as I clawed at the snow with my hands. I pummeled the ground with my feet, trying to push down the snow and compress it enough to get purchase and climb back up onto the firm berm. Spot was also sinking into the snow, but he did some dramatic leaps, moved away toward the forest, then turned back to look at me, wondering what was taking me so long.

I didn’t look up toward the rotary because I knew its floods would blind me again. But my periphery sense and the roar told me it was now only yards away.

My feet found purchase, and I got back up on the berm. I ran along the firm snow toward an area where the natural windflow had prevented much snow buildup off to the side of the street. There, the sculpted snow blanket was shaped like large waves. Between two high swells was a trough of thinner snow that would give me an escape path. If I could stay off the wave tops and run through the troughs, it would be easy. But when I ran away from the berm and toward the closest trough, I again sank in deeper than I expected, floundering in snow like quicksand.

I realized that my strategy was a mistake. I should have stayed in the wide, plowed part at the end of the street, taking my chances, hoping to feint and dodge my way to the side of the intake box and escape before the machine could turn around and come after me.

The rotary roar was louder still, like a jet on takeoff. Its floods were so bright they seemed like Klieg lights in the night. They showed every ripple of snow in the forest, illuminating my way. But as I clawed my way forward, toward the trees, away from the street and the monster blower, the areas that looked like they had the thinnest snow cover were still too deep for easy travel. But I dove forward, clambered back up onto my feet, then dove forward again.

For some stupid reason, I’d initially had a vague sense that as I went into the forest, I would leave the blower behind, stuck back on the smooth surface of the street. But in my peripheral vision, I saw the blower get to the end of the street then bump up over the curb. It kept on coming, not slowing at all as it churned away from the street, toward the trees, toward me, chewing up all the snow and branches and anything else between the machine and me.

Spot ran back to me.

I churned with my feet and pulled with my hands, swimming through snow that was thick enough to make it very difficult to move but light enough that it wouldn’t support my weight.

The roar grew louder. Spot turned toward the rotary, growled and barked. The dim snow was transformed into a blinding white stage set as the rotary’s lights shined on me and beyond. Now in the deep snow, the machine was moving three times as fast as I was. I knew I only had seconds before it was on me. I saw a fallen branch to my right, a skinny stick, two inches in diameter, leaning down from the tree where it had broken off. It leaned at a steep angle, still attached at its base to the tree that shed it. I jerked and scrambled and leaped toward it. I got a hand wrapped around it and a foot onto it where there was a bend in the wood. I pushed up, balancing on one leg, reaching out my other hand to other branches on the tree’s trunk. I grabbed a smaller branch and pulled while I took sliding steps up the angled wood, desperate to gain some height above the snow. Spot looked up at me.

The lights blinded. The roar ripped at my eardrums. The noxious smell of diesel exhaust filled my lungs and choked me.

Spot looked at the rotary, then bounded away from it.

The sharp whirling teeth of the auger were about to grab my limbs and chunk-cut-pull me into the fast-spinning impeller to be dismembered and shot into the forest.

I pushed off the branch and leaped up and back toward the rotary. My right knee caught the top edge of the auger opening. My left leg hung down in front. I felt the auger grab at my jeans. I flailed my arms, grabbed a corner of blower chute with one hand. I pulled myself up and over the intake housing. I stood up on the top edge of the huge metal box inside which the auger churned. Out of the top of the box rose the big blower chute. It was like a metal chimney with a nozzle at the top out of which the snow shot at 60 miles per hour, arcing into the night.

The unseen operator immediately rotated the chute so that the nozzle swiveled toward me. He wanted to use the chute to blow me off the machine. I pulled myself up against the chute, which vibrated as thousands of pounds of snow per second coursed through the channel. Holding the back of the chute, I stepped up onto the cab, my body against the windshield behind which the phantom driver worked the controls.

The roaring teeth of the machine were now beneath me, eating snow and branches and forest debris. I spread my arms and tried to span the cockpit cab, my body plastered against the glass as I floundered for a grip to keep from falling off in front of the auger. I saw Spot at the side of the machine. He was barking, but I only heard the roar of the rotary.

The machine made a sudden braking lurch. The deceleration threw me forward, off the cab and back down onto the auger housing. My arm flopped down and in front of the auger. I felt the spinning rotor grab at my jacket sleeve. I jerked my arm back, adrenaline making my breath short and my head throb.

I rolled back toward the windshield, flailing again for something to grab onto.

The rotary turned left, throwing me sideways. Then it turned right and braked again. I knew the driver wanted to toss me off into the snow so I’d be sucked into the auger intake.

My hand found a moving windshield wiper on the right side of the machine. I grabbed it and pulled the wiper out from the windshield, hoping to break it off. My arm went back and forth as the wiper made its sweep. I tensed my abdomen and pulled my legs up, scraping my shoes across the top of the rotor housing. The wiper broke off just as I scrambled onto my knees. The clouds of snow that billowed up from the auger entrance coated the windshield. If I could break off the other wiper, the driver wouldn’t be able to see.

I got from my knees to my feet. The driver accelerated forward. I leaped toward the cab, planning to slide across the windshield and get the other wiper.

But the rotary lurched to a stop. I was thrown off the front into the snow. Spot ran to me.

“Go!” I shouted. “Run!” I pointed toward the forest.

The driver started up again, the auger roaring. Spot jumped away. I stared for a moment into the maw of the beast as it ground toward me. I turned and leaped, clawed and scrambled my way forward through the deep snow. There was a tree ahead, a misshapen pine. The trunk went up at an angle. The trunk was big enough to stop the rotary but small enough that I might be able to get my arms around it. About ten feet up was a dead branch, broken off a few feet out from the trunk. If I could get up to it…

I rushed forward, away from the rotary. I got foot purchase on a mound of heavier, firmer snow that had avalanched from branches far above. I grabbed the tree trunk as I stood up, balancing on the compressed snow. The roaring monster was almost on me. The cloud of snow it threw up surrounded me, and it glowed bright in the floodlight glare, making it difficult to see the tree. I felt the blast of swirling air from the auger. It was inches away. I had a second. Maybe less.

I leaped and pulled myself up at the same time. My momentum carried me up a few feet. At the top of my arc, I let go of the trunk and reached for the broken branch above, thrashing, catching air with my right hand.

But my left hand caught the branch.

I swung to the left, then back to the right. My right hand caught the branch. I did a pull-up, a stomach crunch, scraping at the tree trunk with my feet.

The edge of my right shoe caught on a small branch stub. My other foot swung in the air.

The beast was below, stopped just short of the tree trunk. My feet were a few feet above the roaring, spinning auger. I tried to pull up farther, but the dead branch seemed greased with wet ice. My hands started to slip. I stopped pulling and focused on just holding.