by Dave Stanton
I tied a white apron around my waist and began washing glasses in the metal sinks behind the bar. I didn’t know much about the restaurant business, but I knew enough to fire the previous bar manager after discovering he was tapping the tills for $200 a week. Aside from my investment, that was my sole contribution to the resurrection of Zeke’s. That, and filling in behind the bar once a week.
A few of the tables in the saloon were taken, couples having an early lunch. A family of tourists came in from the cold and chose the saloon rather than the dining room. Liz, her brown hair straight, jeans tight, breasts braless and pointy, grabbed a handful of menus and left the bar to wait on them. I poured Irish coffees for a man and his wife, and said hello to Bill, a young, mustachioed alcoholic on his stool near the stove. A strict one-pitcher limit for Soggy Bill.
The loud, unmistakable rumble of Harleys made me look out the plate glass window behind the small stage in front of the room. I caught a passing glimpse of a helmeted man parking his motorcycle in the icy lot out front. I shook my head and smiled, wondering what type of nut would ride a street bike in this weather.
My smile faded when the three bikers came through the front doors. They were dressed for the cold, bulky with layers beneath their black jackets, gloves studded with chrome points, chaps stiff and crackling with ice. They stood for a moment, glaring silently into the interior as all eyes turned toward them. Then they walked across the saloon, their boots thudding against the creaking floorboards. A palpable musk of exhaust, grease, unwashed hair, never-washed leather, and stale sweat assaulted my nostrils. The odor thick enough that no amount of road wind would remedy it. They took a table at the far side of the bar where the stove flickered with heat.
Liz took their drink order while they peeled off their coats and rolled their sleeves to show the swastikas, hooded faces, and Celtic crosses inked on their forearms. One of the men had hollowed cheeks, deep eye sockets, and straggly hair down to his shoulders. When he looked at Liz, his mouth fell open in a hideous leer, half his teeth gone, the remainder brown and rotted. The man next to him surveyed the bar with eyes hard and still, his bush-like beard growing over a rash of tattoos rising up his neck. He acknowledged Liz’s perky nipples with a brief nod, his face emotionless.
The third biker was a moose of a man, his chest and shoulders massive, a thin black goatee outlining his mouth. When he sat, the thick girth of his stomach sunk to rest on his crotch. He may have been carrying an extra fifty pounds, but that didn’t mean the other 300 were any less menacing. He would be the muscle, his physical presence both a warning and a threat. Anyone wanted to mess with these dudes, they’d have to go through him.
“What are they drinking?” I said to Liz.
“Six shots, well whiskey.”
I set the glasses in a row and filled them in one motion. Liz moved the shots to a tray and went back to their table. All three of them now seemed to be making a game of following her chest with their eyes, their faces split in smarmy smiles. The gaunt man pulled a pack of Chesterfields from his pocket and lit a cigarette.
“Sorry,” Liz said. “No smoking. California law.”
“That’s right, boys,” I said. The man with the lit cigarette shot a glare in my direction, but the other two ignored me.
“Come on, sweet tits,” the man with the beard said. “That law’s a crock of shit, and everyone knows it.” He thumbed open a box of Marlboros and stuck one in his mouth.
“Goddammit,” I muttered. I was at the far side of the bar, where it met the wall. I started walking toward the end that opened to the floor.
“Hey, man,” Soggy Bill said, “It’s the law.” The bikers halted in midsentence and stared. Bill was a slight man, malnourished from taking the majority of his calories in beer. He often arrived here half-drunk at noon. Most days, operating his zipper and fumbling his pecker out before pissing himself was a significant physical challenge.
“I’m just gonna pretend you never said a word,” moose man said.
“Is that right?” Bill slurred. He slid off his stool and took a step forward. Bill had a thing for Liz, and apparently his boozy logic told him this was an opportunity to defend her.
“Put out those smokes now!” he said, summoning a hazy rage that might have been funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
Just as I came around the bar, the big biker stood and pulled Bill forward by his shirt front and gave him a light slap across the head. “You some dumbass kind of white nigger?” he said, then fit his hand around the back of Bill’s neck and pushed his head to the floor. Bill squirmed weakly, his face jammed into the floorboards under the biker’s boot.
I moved toward them, but the beard stood and blocked me from where Bill lay writhing. “Get back there and pour us another round, barkeep,” he said.
At that moment, a family of four walked through the doors. They froze, staring at the scene in the saloon. They looked like they stepped from a Norman Rockwell painting, the father wearing an overcoat over a suit, the mom with her hair pinned above her jacket’s fur collar, the children dressed in their Sunday best. I paused for a second, watching their expressions turn from shock to disgust, before they turned and hurried out.
“The sheriff’s on the way,” I said to the bikers. “You all get your asses out of here.” I jerked my thumb toward the door.
“You called the pigs?” the beard said, his eyes blazing. “You dumb, sorry motherfucker.” He turned at the hip, his fist cocked.
Men who look rough and talk tough like to scare people, but that doesn’t mean they know how to fist fight. A couple guys backing you up, you don’t need to be Mike Tyson. That’s what being in a biker gang is all about; intimidation is easy when numbers are on your side. As individuals, though, most hardcore bikers are incompetent, frustrated losers, forever making excuses for their shortcomings and hiding behind the ridiculous claim that they are the one-percenters, an elite species that make their own rules and live outside the law. Their ethos is so deeply ingrained that, even when imprisoned for life, they continue to claim they’ve beaten the system.
As for the bearded biker, he jumped forward and threw a wild roundhouse at my head.
Spend a little time around people who like to throw punches, and you learn a trained boxer is far more dangerous than most wild-eyed street brawlers. I once saw a featherweight boxer knock out a man a hundred pounds heavier. The featherweight was so short he had to jump to land the punch, but the bigger man went down like a sack of rocks. In this case though, I wasn’t giving away height or weight to the biker who tried to take my head off. He was probably six foot and two bills, and I had him by an inch or two and at least ten pounds.
I ducked his haymaker and snapped a left into his face, breaking his nose. Want to see how tough someone is? See if they come after you after their nose gets busted. On the pain scale, if getting kicked in the nuts is a ten, a broken nose is a fifteen.
He fell to his knees, his hands clutching his face, blood spreading from between the fingers. He wouldn’t be getting up—at least not for a minute or two. I turned to my right, knowing what was coming. Or so I thought.
The moose turned full toward me, his fists balling, smiling as if relishing the moment. I had a quick second to consider that this one fell outside my theory—what turned him on was causing pain, and he didn’t need backup. But before he could take a step, Liz came from behind, swinging the heavy glass pitcher Soggy Bill had been drinking from. The thick bottom slammed into the big biker’s temple. It was a hell of a shot, and I have high standards for that sort of thing.
His eyes rolling, the man pirouetted and fell on his back so hard the chandeliers swayed and ancient dust rose up through the floorboards. By this time the saloon had cleared out and patrons from the dining room were peering around the corner, their eyes wide with curiosity and fear.
“Remind me not to piss you off,” I said to Liz. Her face looked like a snapshot of someone who’d just survived a near-death experience, eyes round, her lips
a slash of red. In her white knuckled fist she still clenched the pitcher, and I told her to set it down. She ignored me and looked poised to swing again if necessary.
The skull-faced biker with the bad teeth had risen from his chair and backed off, apparently wanting no part in the altercation. I had discounted him as a non-threat, but suddenly a small automatic was in his hand, pointed at my chest.
“You think you can disrespect the War Dogs and get away with it?” His voice was hoarse, his eyes smoldering like coals in his skeletal face.
“This is a family place, man,” I said. “You want to raise hell, go to the Ho-Down on 89.”
He laughed unevenly, and I noticed his gun hand was shaking. Not out of fear, I suspected, but more likely because his heart was banging away on crystal meth.
“You, you think you can tell us where to go?” His cackle rose in pitch, and his face glowed with a manic sheen. I stood watching him, my hands half raised.
“Liz, why don’t you pour our friend a drink?” I nodded at her, and she set down the pitcher and began walking behind the bar.
“Freeze, bitch,” he said.
“Come on, man, let’s have a drink. We can work this out,” I said. Their shots had been spilled when the big man went down, the glasses scattered, whiskey dripping from the table where they’d sat.
“The only thing to work out here is your funeral.”
“Liz, pour a couple shots of Wild Turkey for us, would you?”
“Make it three, you son of a whore,” said the beard from his knees.
Ah, the voice of reason.
“Fine,” I said, edging toward where Liz stood near the end of the bar. “No problem.”
Skull-face’s eyes darted right and left, his gun roaming the room. I nudged Liz, and once we were behind the bar, I pointed to the rubber mats, then hooked a finger in her belt loop and pushed down. She squatted and disappeared from the biker’s line of sight.
“Three whiskeys,” I said, moving to my right. I grabbed a bottle and poured three shots, my free hand easing to a slot aside the ice bin.
“Tell the skank to stand up!” The gun was again trained at my chest. I didn’t think skull-face would shoot me in cold blood, but his quivering lips and bugging eyes were a concern. How long since he’d slept? Two, three days? A man in the throes of a methamphetamine binge is an unpredictable thing.
“I believe she’s fainted,” I said. My fingers touched the smooth wooden pistol grip of my sawed-off shotgun.
A silent moment passed, then a burst of red and blue light flashed through the front window. From where I stood I watched Sheriff Marcus Grier and a deputy park and climb out of their cruiser. Grier smiled at something his partner said, obviously unaware an armed man was inside. As soon as skull-face turned to look out the window, I brought the shotgun to my chest. At the same moment, the beard grabbed the bar rail and rose to his feet, his nose a bloody mess, swollen and bent across his face. Our eyes locked for a second, then he ducked and yelled, “He’s got a gun!”
Skull-face whirled and let off a wild shot in my direction, the round shattering a bottle of good tequila on the shelf above me. I leveled the shotgun and jerked the trigger, the blast deafening compared to the sharp rapport of the small caliber pistol. Skull-face flew back against the wall and crumpled in a heap. I leaned over the bar and saw the bearded biker crouched down. I swung the shotgun’s thick steel barrel and cracked him behind the ear. The blow knocked him out cold.
Outside, I spotted Sheriff Grier pressed to the edge of the window, his revolver in his hand. I hadn’t called the police; a patron must have. I set down the shotgun and waved for him to come in.
“What in the hell?” he said a moment later, banging through the doors and covering the room with his pistol, his deputy following behind. They surveyed the three prone bodies strewn about the saloon.
“They came in and copped an attitude. When I eighty-sixed them, that one swung on me, and the one over there pulled a gun.”
“You shot him?”
“A nonlethal round. Rubber bullet.”
Skull-face was curled in the fetal position, moaning softly. Grier found the small automatic on the floor and told his deputy to bag it. Then they cuffed the three bikers and called for paramedics.
• • •
Half an hour later, the ambulances eased out of the parking lot, followed by a trio of police cruisers. The rubbernecking patrons and passersby finally dispersed, leaving me alone with Marcus Grier, who, after some pointed questioning, begrudgingly agreed I acted without negligence or criminal intent in handling the situation. That resolved, we stood watching the flow of traffic on the highway.
“Looks like the crazies are flocking in,” I said.
“Yeah, It’s gonna be nuts at the state line tonight.”
“You got to work New Year’s Eve?”
He glanced at me, his eyes white against the dark shine of his skin. “Every cop in the region is on duty. You ever been at the casinos for New Year’s?”
I shrugged. “Once, about fifteen years ago. Just a bunch of drunk college kids back then. Come to think of it, I might have been one of them.”
“Times have changed. Last year was nearly a riot. Knifings, fistfights, drug overdoses. We even considered bringing in the National Guard this year.”
“Yeah, I heard. The politicians still decided to let the party happen, huh?”
“The Chamber of Commerce pushed like hell. The street barricades go up at nine P.M.”
A flatbed truck pulled up, and two men began wheeling the three parked motorcycles up an aluminum ramp.
“What are you charging the bikers with?” I said.
“Attempted murder for the gunman. Assault and battery for the other two. Possession and parole violation for all three.”
“Slap them with a smoking violation too.”
“Darn, I almost forgot,” Grier said, and I think he tried to smile.
• • •
I drove home slowly after that. I was not looking forward to sharing the events of the afternoon with Candi. My first wife had left me as a result of a shooting, and though no one had died this time, I still didn’t take it lightly. Even though I’d done nothing to invite the trouble with the bikers, I felt on the defensive, as if I was guilty until proven innocent.
Regardless, I marched right to the sunroom, where Candi was painting. At thirty years old, she was art director at South Lake Tahoe’s community college. She came from rough cowboy stock, her father a sheriff, her uncles and cousins rodeo riders, oilmen, and one a cop in Austin. I thought, or hoped, she’d be less concerned than a typical woman over what had happened at Zeke’s. You’d never guess it from her curvy body, but Candi was no-nonsense and not intimidated by conflict. But before I could say anything, my cell rang.
“Dirty, double-crossin’ Dan.” It was Cody Gibbons, my good buddy from San Jose.
“What’s happening, Cody?”
“Terr-bear and me are driving to Tahoe for New Year’s.”
“Who?”
“Terry, my gal. I told you about her.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Hey, not while I’m driving! Would you stop that? Jesus!” A pause and some laughter, then, “You’ll love her, Dirt.”
“I’m sure.”
“What are you doing for dinner tonight? I made reservations for four at the fancy joint on the top floor of Pistol Pete’s. You can make it, right?”
“Candi and I are going to Kalani’s.”
“What? Isn’t that a sushi joint?” Cody knew I didn’t like sushi.
“They serve other things too.”
“Time for a change of plans, kemosabe,” he guffawed.
“Let me call you back.”
“I’ll see you in a couple hours.” More laughter, mostly female, then the line went dead.
“Who was that?” Candi said.
“Cody Gibbons.”
“What’s that wild man up to?”
“The usua
l, it sounds like.”
“And?”
“He wants us to join him for dinner tonight.”
“Do you want to?”
My phone rang again. I thought it was probably Cody calling back, but it was a number I didn’t recognize.
“Investigations, Dan Reno.”
“This is General Raymond Horvachek.” The voice was so gruff and authoritative that I almost replied, “And I’m Captain Kangaroo.” I thought that would have been funny, but I resisted.
“What can I do for you, General?”
“My understanding is you were the one who found my daughter.”
“Ah,” I said, my wise-ass temptations gone. I waved at Candi and walked to the spare bedroom I used as an office.
“Am I correct?” he said.
“I was skiing last week and found a body in the woods. I was never informed of her name.”
“My daughter’s name was Valerie Horvachek.”
“I see.”
“The police in Douglas County and Gardnerville are hitting dead ends. I want to hire a private investigator.” He cleared his throat. “Are you available?” More like an order than a question.
“I am. When can we meet?” I said. Some private detectives are picky about their cases. Not me. My phone doesn’t ring all that often, and I got bills to pay, just like anyone else.
“I live in Sacramento. I’m available tomorrow morning at oh-eight-hundred.”
“How about the afternoon?” I said. Sacramento was a two-hour drive.
“I start my days early, Mr. Reno. Force of habit.”
“Noon, then.”
“If that’s the earliest you can make it,” he said, the irritation plain in his voice.
He gave me his address and hung up. I sat at my desk and stared into space for a minute while images of the dead girl floated in my head. Then I ran an Internet search on General Raymond Horvachek and quickly found a bio on him. He was a three-star general in the US Army, a West Point graduate who insisted on working his way up from drill sergeant. Decorated for service in Iran and Afghanistan. Multiple decorations, including a purple heart. Retired two years ago.