by Todd Borg
Later, I got up and found Spot lying under the living room window in a ray of sun. His tongue was flopped out on the floor boards. He appeared to be baking. Dying by fire was preferable to dying by ice-cold water.
“Hey, large one, wanna take a ride to Squaw?” I said in my cheeriest voice.
Spot didn’t move, didn’t even raise his eyes.
“It’s a road trip. It’s true that you’ll be able to see the lake, but we won’t go near a boat. Promise.”
No reaction.
“Okay, suit yourself.”
I took Spot out on the deck, hooked up the long chain so that he could get to shade and his water bowl, then drove up the shore.
It was a typical August afternoon. A cool breeze cut the hot sun. When I came around the north side of the lake I drove into the shadow of a fast-growing thunderhead. The cloud was pink and orange and yellow. It looked like Turner’s storm.
Hail started pummeling the windshield as I drove into Tahoe City. It started as pea-sized and soon grew to the size of marbles. Wind rocked my Jeep. If I were on the lake I’d get a glimmer of what Turner’s storm was like. I was envisioning golf balls falling from the sky when it abruptly stopped.
I joined the Truckee River where it begins at the dam in Tahoe City and followed it along 89 to the Olympic Rings that mark the Squaw Valley turnoff.
The hail stones had left a white coating on the landscape, but as I rolled into the spectacular valley the sun poked through and the road began steaming.
The new village at the base of the ski lifts is a collection of expensive condos and exclusive shops and restaurants and art galleries all grouped around a set of pedestrian-only streets. Although the village has a garage hidden underneath, it is for the rich condo owners and their guests. I parked out in the far lot amongst the other proles.
The walkways of the village were crowded with people strolling along, sipping cappuccinos and window shopping. I looked for the kind of place that every resident and vacationer alike would stop in and found it in a bakery.
A long line led up to the counter. I waited behind two girls wearing Stanford sweatshirts and talking about one of their mom’s stock options. When I got up to the counter I pointed to a tray under the glass. “Two Danishes, please.” Because my ears were partly deafened, my voice was unnaturally loud.
The woman leaned back a bit. “Here or to go?”
“One of each,” I said, thinking of Spot’s latest favorite food. “I’m looking for Faith Runyon,” I said, as the woman rang up my purchase. “She lives someplace in Squaw.” I spoke as if she were still alive. “Any idea how I might find her?”
The woman shook her head and handed me my change and the tray with one Danish on a fancy paper plate and a dressy waxed bag containing the other.
“She’s young, tall, pretty, long black hair, blue eyes,” I said. “Sound familiar?”
The woman shook her head again. She looked past me toward the person behind me. “Next,” she said. I took my food.
After I ate I walked around to the check-in office for vacation rentals. A small, bald, middle-aged man who was all smiles was eager to help me with my dream vacation. He was eating a poppy seed bagel when I walked in. He quickly put it in a desk drawer. He smiled, straining to keep his lips closed as he chewed.
“Do you know Faith Runyon?” I said. “She lives around here, and I’m trying to locate her.”
“I’m sorry, sir. We are very respectful of our owners’ privacy.” He was still chewing. He swallowed, then slurped tea out of a foam cup.
“She lives in one of these condos?” I said.
“I don’t know. But even if she did, I wouldn’t be at liberty to tell you which one.”
“She’s young, tall, pretty, long black hair, blue eyes. Sound familiar?” I said for the second time.
He shook his head. “I don’t know a woman of that description.” The man grinned. There were two poppy seeds stuck in his teeth. “Sorry,” he said.
I checked a restaurant nearby, then another, then another. No one knew Faith Runyon. I went to the hotels and inns, spoke to the receptionists, the concierges, the bartenders. I found coffee shops and a sandwich shop. There was a sunglasses shop, a hat shop, two art galleries and a cyber café. There were ski shops and snowboard shops.
No one knew Faith Runyon.
I was about to leave the valley when I saw one more place that nearly every resident would visit. The cable car building.
The attendant was an older woman. I asked her about Faith. She pursed her lips and shook her head and didn’t say a word.
I looked around and saw a young man loitering near the big windows that faced the mountain. He was in his twenties and had two silver safety-pins stuck through his left nostril and two more through his left eyebrow. His left ear was heavy with rings. I didn’t want to see the left side of his tongue.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for a woman named Faith Runyon. About your age, tall, pretty, black hair, blue eyes?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Owen McKenna.” I reached out my hand.
“Paul Johnson.” His grip was strong. Up close, he looked like he’d been dug out of a peat bog. There were chunks of debris in his dreadlocks. He regarded me for a moment. “This girl you’re asking about, does she have really blue eyes? Like Lake Tahoe? Like they’re almost lit up from inside?”
“That would be her. Ring a bell?”
“Been awhile since my bell got rung. But she’d ring anyone’s bell, let me tell you.”
SEVEN
“I never knew her name,” Paul said. “Faith. I like that.”
“She talk to you much?”
“I wish. All those rides she takes on the cable car, but she never notices any of us. Even when I rode up on the same car. She just stares out at the cliff. Thoughtful, I guess. And sad. More sad than anything. She’s dressed to kill and she’s probably got enough money to last forever, but she’s sad. She your friend?”
“Acquaintance.”
“Oh. You’re one of them. She puts away the sadness for you guys. When she comes back down the cable car with you she’s always smiling and laughing and making like everything you say is the funniest and smartest. All because you’ve got the bucks.”
“She’s a prostitute?”
“Oh,” the young man said. “I thought you were a client. Sorry. You’re the first one to call her that. Usually it’s call girl. Or what did that one guy call her? A courtesan. Now there’s a word.”
“How does one contact her?”
“Now you want to go out with her?
“I just want to talk to her,” I said.
“Yeah, right. I don’t know how to contact her.” He turned and looked out the tall windows of the cable car building. He spoke toward the mountain. “She’s probably the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever seen. The way she carries herself is so... what’s the word? Elegant. She could be a model. Instead, she sells herself to rich men.”
“That bother you?” I said.
“I know, you think I’m some kind of innocent idealist. My friend Bobby Crash said that to me.” Paul was still facing the mountain. “He calls me Iowa. Like I’m so innocent I’m an Iowa farm boy. But I’m from L.A. I’ve seen it all. So no, it doesn’t really bother me that she sells herself.” He turned away from the mountain and looked at me. “What bothers me is that she’s so sad.”
“Has Bobby met Faith?”
“I think so. But I don’t think they are close friends.” He pointed out the window toward where the cables arced up the cliff. “He goes up to High Camp after work, sits by the pool and works on his choreography. It’s like a meditation. He closes his eyes and moves his hand through the air, like he’s visualizing his aerials off the halfpipe.” Paul moved his hand around in front of his face as he spoke. “Then he sketches the routine on bar napkins. Come winter, he’ll put the moves to the test. The guy never goofs off. Either he’s out riding or he’s thinking about riding. After h
e won the last championship, he got an agent. And Company Twenty-Five is starting to take off so they’ve got the bucks. Bobby says his next endorsement contract is going to be ten times the last.”
“What’s he endorse?”
“Ride Twenty-Five snowboards. The Bobby Crash model.”
“Haven’t heard of him,” I said.
“You’ve never heard of Bobby Crash?”
“Sorry.”
Paul Johnson looked at me with astonishment. “He’s only about the best rider in the country. Bobby Crash rocks. Rails, pipes, boardercross, free-riding.”
“Where would I meet him?”
“Actually, he’s up at High Camp now. He works at the local sports shop and goes up to High Camp everyday after his shift. He rode the car up a few minutes ago. The next car’s leaving in a couple minutes. If you hurry you can find him up there.”
I got a ticket at the window and was in the line a minute later. Paul Johnson was still standing at the windows.
I called out to him. “What do you do here, Paul?”
“Me? Nothing, yet. I just moved up to Squaw to do some riding. This is an awesome mountain. I’m trying to find work, but I haven’t had any luck so far.” He turned and the sun sparkled on the pins in his nose. “So I come and watch the cable car. Kill some time. Meet some other snowboarders.”
The older woman began taking tickets. “Thanks for your help, Paul,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” he said with a politeness that belied his grunge look.
There were a dozen tourists with me on my trip up the mountain. They plastered themselves against the windows as the big box swung out from the base station and began its ascent.
At first, the cable car went up at a gradual angle. Then it approached the giant cliff and climbed almost vertically up 2000 feet. A man said, “Cheaper than Disneyland and better, too. Huh, honey?” There was no response.
At the top of the cliff the car swung past one of the towers. I heard a gasp, but no other sounds of distress.
We eventually slowed and pulled into High Camp, easing into the docking bay. I walked past the bungie-jumping towers and around toward the pool. Up in the cirques on the mountains were snowfields left over from the previous winter. The afternoon sun was lowering in the sky. Nevertheless, a group of young adults lay on lounge chairs working on their tans. They spoke about security problems with their company’s latest software. Nobody sketched on bar napkins.
“I’m looking for the bar?” I said to a pool worker.
He pointed. “See over there toward the ice-skating rink? Take a left. It’s in the lodge.”
I did as told.
The bar was large and well-lit and nearly empty in the summer. Bobby Crash was at a corner table. A beer sat on the bare table while he sketched on a napkin. I sat at the bar and waited while a bartender at the far end washed and rinsed wine glasses.
Six video screens showed a Cessna flying above the ocean coastline. As a sometime pilot, I guessed the altitude at 10,000 feet. Three men appeared at the open door of the Cessna. They had parachute packs on their backs and snowboards on their feet. One of the men hurled himself out of the plane into space. Another followed immediately. The third man carried a video camera. He jumped out after them.
The snowboarders fell through the sky, tumbling end over end. They righted themselves and surfed on the air. Angling their boards just so, they shot back and forth while falling through the sky at 120 miles per hour.
“You like sky surfing?” a voice said.
I turned and saw Bobby Crash standing nearby. He set his empty glass on the bar. He was a big, solid guy in his mid-twenties, wearing baggy, olive shorts that came down below his knees and looked like a skirt. On his feet were over-sized athletic shoes open and unlaced on sockless feet. He had on a baggy shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His forearms bulged.
His hair was blond and carefully shaped like a thatched roof overhanging his ears. An inch-long tuft of hair hung from the edge of his lower lip and dangled over a clean-shaven chin. He was handsome in spite of himself, tan and squared-jawed.
“I’d love to try sky surfing sometime,” I said.
He smiled and suddenly looked like an unkempt movie star. “My friends the Nostrum brothers in Brentwood took me up twice. Dad’s a Dreamworks guy. Owns a Beechcraft.”
“I bet it was rad,” I said.
He didn’t even notice how hip I was.
“Totally,” he said. He took hold of the lip tuft, pulled it so his lower lip came down, then let go so his lip snapped shut with a little smack. “But sky surfing’s still not as good as riding snow. Deep powder in the trees is the best.”
I was watching the little lip tuft bounce as he spoke. “You’re Bobby Crash, aren’t you?”
He nodded and beamed at me. “Ever since the Ride Twenty-Five TV campaign I’ve been getting recognized. But you’re the oldest dude yet, I’ll give you that.”
“Actually, I didn’t recognize you. Paul Johnson told me you were up here working on your choreography.”
Crash’s happy face collapsed. “Iowa has a problem with his mouth.”
“He told me you rock.”
“Yeah?” He smiled again and leaned on the bar. “I’ve been talking to a producer. I might do a film. At the right price, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
Bobby Crash glanced at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He gritted his teeth and angled his head to see his jaw muscles bulge.
“Johnson says not only are you the raddest rider, but you get all the girls, too.”
“Being the champion doesn’t hurt with the ladies,” he said.
I glanced at the video screen. Girls on Rollerblades were flying up the sides of a giant halfpipe, arcing through the air and rocketing back down. “I’m wondering about one of the ladies,” I said. “Faith Runyon?”
Bobby Crash had turned to look at the video screen. At the sound of Faith’s name he snapped his head back to me. “I told Iowa not to...” He stopped and took a deep breath. “I didn’t think you were a client.” He gave me a grin that made me think of crocodiles.
“I’m not.”
“Then who are you?”
“I’m the last guy she spoke to before she died,” I said, watching him closely.
Crash took a moment before he reacted. He put both hands on the bar, spread them wide and leaned onto his arms. He let his head hang and gave it a slow, exaggerated shake. “That’s terrible,” he said. He gritted his teeth again, swallowing elaborately. “How did she die?”
“Violently.”
Again I watched his reaction. I saw nothing but a slight delay.
“Whoa. Did some dude kill her?”
“Interesting that you don’t assume an accident,” I said. “Your first thought is murder?”
Crash looked at the floor then at me. “I don’t know. I guess it just seems that girls, you know, get killed sometimes. Instead of dying in accidents.”
“How did it work?” I said.
He turned back toward me, biting the side of his lower lip.
“What do you mean?”
“She met her johns up here, right? Were you her pimp?”
Crash’s eyes grew wide. “Hell, no! Like I would be a pimp!” He made a snorting sound. “Besides, I just come up here to work. I had nothing to do with her. I’m a professional athlete.”
“You didn’t like her?”
He looked at me, calmer, back in control. “What’s not to like about her?” He forced another smile, a fakey “say cheese” grin that needed practice.
“So how did it work?” I said again.
“I have no idea.”
“Of course you do. You saw her. You talked to her. No doubt you saw her johns.”
“Sorry, I never noticed.”
“Maybe one of the bartenders was her pimp?”
He shook his head. “Like I said, I work on my choreography. I’m an artist. Some girl comes up here to meet guys who can�
�t get laid without paying for it, I could care less.”
“You weren’t one of her johns?”
Crash threw his head back and laughed. “Me? You’re joking, right? Like I’m going to pay for it when I’ve got more groupies than I can count.”
“She wasn’t interested in you, was she?”
Crash squinted his eyes at me. “Actually, she thought I was hot. I saw her looking at me.”
“So you did notice. I want some information about her. Who she knew. What her johns were like.”
Crash suddenly steeled himself. “What I noticed was none of your business.”
Maybe Crash knew something that would incriminate himself. “You wanted her,” I said, “but she didn’t pay you any attention. You’re the big-shot, champion snowboarder, but she only had eyes for guys with big bucks. For a self-centered brat who is used to getting everything he wants, that could almost be motive for murder, couldn’t it.” I said.
Crash’s tan face turned crimson. He shouted at me. “I don’t take shit like that from anybody!”
I stretched one foot out behind my barstool, bracing myself as he slammed his hands into my chest.
The blow made me jerk, but I stayed put. He tried to shove me again. I stepped sideways, took his arm and twisted it around behind his back. He was strong, and it took a lot of effort to make it seem like holding him was effortless.
The bartender who’d been rinsing glasses behind the bar had come up. “Is, ah, everything all right?”
“Just cleaning out some detritus,” I said. “He pay his bill?”
The bartender nodded. He looked worried. Probably was Crash’s friend.
I pulled out a ten and tossed it on the counter. “Here’s for the commotion. Sorry.”
I took Bobby Crash outside and around the building out of sight from the tourists playing in the swimming pool. There was a big, flat rock next to a dumpster. I turned Crash around and laid him down on the rock so that the sun was in his eyes.
I leaned over him, my knuckles pressing onto his ribs and sternum.
“She met her johns in the bar?”
Crash made a little nod.
“Why? Did she know someone here?”