Tahoe Blowup

by Todd Borg

  Street must have just gotten out of the shower. She was wearing her red satin robe when she opened the door. She looked ravishing.

  “Do you always dress like that when you answer the door for strange men?” I said.

  “Most aren’t as strange as you.” She held the doorjamb as she leaned forward, raised up on tiptoes and kissed me. Her hair was still wet and was delightfully mussed up. She smelled like apples. Probably the shampoo. “Besides, I have the peephole,” she said.

  “What if the man at your door is short and looks like he goes to church with his mother?”

  “Then I put on my Kevlar vest, get my gun and sneak out the back so I can come around and surprise him from behind that bush.” She motioned her head off to the side. Her full lips looked as seductive as ever. I bent down and kissed her again, sucking on her lower lip.

  “Easy, cowboy. I haven’t even had a sip of wine yet.”

  “Why I brought you this.” I held the groceries out, then pulled my arm out from behind my back.

  Street immediately put the rose to her nose and inhaled deeply, her eyes closed in bliss. I liked that a woman who found so much beauty in creepy crawlers would still be affected by the beauty of a rose. Without being particularly careful of the thorns, she put the rose in her teeth, then took the groceries in one hand and the wine in the other. “Ah,” she said, holding up the wine. She rotated on her perfect bare foot and walked inside.

  She set the bread and cheese and wine down on her kitchen counter and got out the corkscrew as I snugged my arms around her from behind, feeling her curves through the slippery satin.

  “Is sex all you think about?” Street said, trying to work the corkscrew.

  I sang like an off-key crooner,

  “I’ve got a one-track mind ’cuz you’ve got a one-track body.”

  “Please,” she said. “Now you’re writing country songs? Anyway, I’m too thin and you know it.”

  “And I’m too tall and you know it. Too thin doesn’t change what you do to me. And it isn’t just chemicals or whatever it is that you say bugs are teaching us about.” She turned to face me. Spot stuck his nose between us and wedged himself into our embrace. He was about as subtle as a bulldozer in a boudoir.

  “You mean pheromones,” Street said. “Insects use them to attract each other.

  Street slipped out of my hands and poured us each some wine, three inches in a large glass for me, maybe six or eight drops for herself. I wasn’t certain if the bottom of her glass got thoroughly moist. Nevertheless, we clicked glasses and drank.

  “Mmmm,” she said and licked her lips.

  “Remember, there is a rabid temperance movement in this country,” I said, pointing at her nearly empty wine glass. “You don’t want the wine police hauling you off to detox camp.”

  She shook her head, her eyes flashing. “Your detecting,” Street said as she munched a chunk of bread. “Has it revealed dark secrets yet?”

  “None at all. All I’ve learned is that the victim was an ornery bastard who had more sex drive than a Brahman bull.”

  “More than you?” Street acted shocked.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Sounds like you’ve spoken to some of his conquests.”

  As soon as Street referred to them in plural, I realized that Jake’s secretary, Betty Williamson, also belonged to the group. Which would explain her animosity toward the girls she called young sluts. I went back over my conversation with her, trying her out for the role as killer.

  “Well?” Street said.

  “Sort of,” I said. “I’ve spoken to his secretary and his wife. From what they said, he pursued every woman he came in contact with and was successful with most of them.”

  “He was that good, huh? Makes me curious.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “Just scientific interest. You hear about men who seem to have magic power over women. I’d like to get a whiff of their special potion as it were. Maybe it’s those pheromones. I’m curious about how it would affect me. Not that I’d act on any impulse, of course.”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “But then I seem to recall that you acted on an impulse with me the first day we met. Remember?”

  Street sipped her wine drops and looked at me with a poker face. “But you tricked me with all that romantic talk about Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series. There should be a law preventing single women from going to art museums. The atmosphere is much too dangerous. Makes women vulnerable to the guile of men.”

  “You’re equating art talk with sexual trickery?”

  “That and all that one-track body stuff. You men forget that we women want to believe. That’s why we’re so fragile.”

  I set my wine glass down. “But in this case it’s all true,” I said as I ran my hands over her red satin robe.

  “And what are you doing now, if not using sexual guile?” Street said as she reached up and kissed me.

  “Investigating.”

  “What?” she asked through our kiss.

  “Primal needs,” I said.

  “Whose?” Her lips were soft and wet.

  “Yours,” I mumbled.

  “Bullshit,” Street said as she pulled me into her bedroom.

  TWELVE

  Street had to retire early in order to be at her lab first thing in the morning to check on her maggots. So Spot and I drove up the mountain to my cabin. I was wary of what I would find, but my entryway was free of stuffed animals.

  I let Spot out to run. Normally he explores in the woods and comes back and paws the door after ten minutes or so. Twenty minutes later he still hadn’t come back and I began to worry.

  I went out on the deck and called his name. All I got in response was the high squeak of a late season bat flying through the dark. A light breeze washed over me, thick with the sickening scents of smoke and water-logged coals. I walked around the cabin to the drive and called Spot’s name again. Nothing. Turning back to the cabin I heard sounds from down below the deck.

  “Spot? Spot, is that you?” I said, expecting him to bound out from the shadows, wagging proudly and showing off some log or something he’d dragged out of the woods. I looked down the mountain from the deck. The sounds seemed to be coming closer, but were still a bit distant. I went inside, got the big flashlight from the kitchen drawer and returned to the deck.

  I turned it on and shined the beam down the mountain. The sound was louder now. Walking sounds, but muffled as though through ashes. And high cries.

  There was a flash of reflected light as I swept the flashlight beam. I slowly shined it back and forth until the beam found the movement.

  Spot was coming up the slope. His head was down and his whimpering mixed with heavy breathing. There was something with him, under his feet. Then I understood.

  I ran down the deck stairs, then down the slope toward Spot.

  “What have you got, boy?” I called out, concern washing over me as the shape beneath him took on color and size. From a distance I thought he had a tawny colored duffel bag and I worried about more bodies. As Spot dragged it closer the duffel bag became furry and it grew ears and eyes.

  A mountain lion.

  “Spot!” I yelled.

  Spot let go and the lion slumped to the ground. I was horrified to see blood all over Spot’s jowls. The mountain lion’s neck was covered as well, the fur red. “Jesus, Spot, what the hell have you done?”

  He looked up at me, the strangest look in his eyes. As if he’d only wanted to play with the lion and didn’t mean to hurt it.

  “Spot, come here! Now!”

  Spot left the apparently lifeless lion where it lay and came up to me. Where he wasn’t bloody, he was nearly black with ash and his neck was wet with his own saliva.

  I shined the light back on the lion and saw movement.

  “Spot, come!” I yelled and ran back up to the cabin. I keep a chain on the deck. “You stay here,” I said as I clipped him in.

  Next to the list
of my neighbors’ phone numbers are a few emergency numbers. One is Dr. Richard Siker, the vet who periodically gives Spot his checkups. I dialed him at home.

  “Dick,” I said when he answered. “Owen McKenna. Are you busy?”

  “Not unless sitting down with this Silver Oak Cabernet qualifies as busy.”

  “I’ve got a serious problem.”

  “Let me guess. Large and covered with spots.”

  “Related. My dog just dragged a mountain lion out of the woods.”

  “Good Christ! Spot killed a mountain lion?”

  “It’s not dead yet. I saw it move its head. But it is lying in the dark down below my deck.”

  “Owen, this isn’t my area. I deal with house cats.”

  “C’mon, Dick. Who else am I going to call?”

  “All right. Give me fifteen minutes.”

  I was outside when Dick drove up. He got out of his Explorer carrying his bag. “You got a gun?”

  “No.”

  Dick gave me a puzzled look. He knew I was an ex-cop, but the subject of guns had never come up between us.

  “Then take my pistol.” He dug it out of his glove compartment and handed it to me. It was a Beretta nine millimeter.

  “You’ll have to be close to hit a charging lion with this. Let’s hope we won’t need it. Down here?” he pointed to the stairs that went down from the side of the deck.”

  “Yes.”

  Dick Siker walked down, pausing to look at Spot who was sitting in the corner of the deck. “You’re in deep shit, Spot, if you start killing mountain lions.”

  Spot hung his head. His eyes drooped in shame.

  I trotted after Dick. I’d found another flashlight in the garage. I shined both of them on the lion as Dick and I hiked down toward it.

  We stopped about twenty feet away.

  “I don’t have a tranquilizer gun,” Dick said. “Don’t usually need them with poodles and tabby cats.” Dick shook his head as he gestured toward the lion. “This kind of situation could get a guy killed.”

  Dick bent down and picked up a stick. He tossed it toward the lion and missed. The lion didn’t move. He tossed another, then a third which bounced off the lion’s flank. The lion groaned but remained motionless.

  “Okay,” Dick said. “Better have that piece ready. Expect this guy to move fast and maybe even snarl at me. But don’t shoot unless he tries to put my head or neck in his mouth.” Dick looked at me. “Understand? He might want to swat at me or even grab me with his paws. But I can still get my syringe into him.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  Dick nodded, then set his bag on the ground, got out a big syringe, stuck the needle in a vial and drew out the liquid. He left the bag, took one of the flashlights and moved slowly toward the mountain lion.

  I stood off to the side, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other.

  Dick started talking, soft and low, as he got close. “Okay, you big pussy cat. Let’s you and me get friendly. Atta boy, I’m just gonna sidle up next to you, gonna stay away from your paws in case you wanna leave some love marks on me. There you go, real easy.”

  Dick continued his talk and inched closer while I tried to keep the gun and light steady and on the target. My hand vibrated with tension and I thought I was crazy to have put my friend in this position. I knew Dick would walk up to any animal short of an angry grizzly, but that was perhaps a lack of judgement, the result of twenty-five years of practice where the most dangerous creature he ever dealt with was a mother Doberman with young puppies. Dick was the kind of guy who could not walk away from an injured animal, dangerous or not. It could be a prescription for disaster. One thing I knew was this: I wasn’t going to wait for the lion to put his teeth around Dick’s skull.

  I aimed for the heart and my finger tightened on the trigger.

  Dick reached a long, thin stick out and brushed it along the back of the lion’s neck. The animal twitched but nothing more.

  Dick brushed the animal again. This time it did not move at all. Dick kept talking as he moved closer.

  I knew he had more guts than I did when he reached out and laid a hand on the lion’s bloody neck. He slid his hand down in a gentle pet. His hand went up to the lion’s head, where his fingers looked small between the ears. I reminded myself that Spot’s head was bigger and probably his teeth were too and Dick wasn’t afraid working on Spot. But that rationale didn’t do anything to calm my pounding heart. Just when I was expecting Dick to stick in the needle he stood up and walked back to his bag.

  “Any wild animal that doesn’t move in a situation like this has about a one percent chance of making it through the night. I better listen to his insides before I shoot him full of anything.” He pulled out his stethoscope and went back to the mountain lion.

  Once again, he approached slowly, calling the lion a pussy cat and talking about love making and full moons.

  I concentrated on being a good sentry while Dick put that stethoscope all over the lion’s chest.

  Finally, Dick stood up again. “I won’t know for sure until we get this pussy cat down to the hospital and up on the table, but I don’t think there’s any chance of survival. There’s a lot of fluid in the lungs. And it looks like the blood loss is substantial. This cat’s in shock and we’ve only got a few minutes if we’ve got any hope at all. I’m going to give him a shot while you run up and get a heavy blanket we can carry him in.”

  “But what if he reacts when you give him the shot? I should be ready with the gun.”

  “Trust me, Owen. This guy isn’t going to react. You better hurry. We are down to just a few minutes.”

  I sprinted up to the cabin and took the deck stairs three at a time.

  The strongest blanket in the house was the red Hudson Bay on my bed. I yanked it free and ran back to Dick who was bent over the mountain lion.

  “Spread it out here,” he said. “Okay, I’ll reach around the chest, you reach under its abdomen. Gentle now. Up onto the blanket. Corners together. Ready to lift?”

  I nodded. We both stood. The stink of blood and smoke rose from the lion’s fur.

  The lion was relatively light. Dick, carrying the chest and head, was lifting the most weight, but I didn’t think the lion could weigh much more than a hundred pounds.

  We hustled up the slope and slid the animal into the back of my Jeep. I left Spot tied where he was. Dick jumped in his Explorer and led the way down the mountain and south to his animal hospital not far from my office on Kingsbury Grade.

  Dick parked at the back entrance. I stopped next to him and we had the lion in the back door of the animal hospital and up on his table in seconds.

  “Remember where my office is?” Dick said to me as he pulled some instruments out of drawers and opened the cabinets above.

  “Last door down the hall?”

  “Right. Look in the address book on my desk. Solomon Reed lives down in the Carson Valley. Get him up here fast. If there is any possibility of saving this guy, we’ll need Solomon.” He shifted the lion on the table. “Oh. I mean this girl.”

  I got Dr. Reed on the phone and explained the situation.

  It took a moment for him to respond and his voice sounded groggy as if he’d been in a deep sleep. “It’ll take me thirty minutes to get up the mountain at the fastest. I better tell Dick a couple things that can’t wait ’til then.”

  “Okay, hold on.”

  I ran back to the examining room. “Reed says he better talk to you before he jumps in his car.”

  Dick picked up a wall phone, stuck it in the crook of his shoulder and continued to work while they talked.

  I didn’t understand any of it. They spoke of various drugs and pulmonary this and histamine that. I walked over to the lion’s head and looked at her eyes which were half shut. Her breathing was labored and I could hear the wheezing in her lungs. The big cat’s fur was wet and dirty from being dragged. And the smoke smell was so strong that it was clear that the lion had been dragged through a lo
t of ash. Had the lion been injured in the fire before Spot got hold of her? Or was that thinking my bias at work?

  Dick had already done some work on the neck wounds. He’d gotten in several sets of stitches to staunch the blood flow. But blood was still oozing. I stared at the injuries, astounded that Spot would do such a thing as attack a mountain lion. I tried to convince myself that there was a reason, that maybe the lion had attacked first and Spot was merely defending himself.

  You feel an instant connection to an animal in such a situation, hoping desperately that its life be saved, yet feeling helpless. A single incident like this back in high school would have sent me into the veterinary profession. Looking back now, it seemed a much more rewarding career than the police work I’d pursued for so long before moving up to Tahoe to engage in the slightly more genteel work of private investigation.

  As I stared at the bloody lion, my eyes blurring, I saw again the robber who’d come running out of the Wells Fargo Bank down by the Wharf. I was in a cruiser bringing in a repeat sex offender. The call came on the radio while I was moving east on Bay Street. I was near the bank branch. I jerked the front wheels onto the sidewalk, slammed it in park and did a sideways roll out the door.

  I crawled up to the left front wheel and had my .45 up and over the hood when he came out. The bank door opened so hard and fast it broke the hydraulic dampening arm, bounced up against the wall and exploded the tempered glass into a million diamonds.

  He ran out fast, his long, lean legs bare below the gangsta pants. Little pebbles shot out from under his Air Jordans as he turned down the sidewalk.

  I played it by the book and shouted the warning. After his gun came up and he took a rough and bouncing aim at my face over the hood of the cruiser, I shot to kill.

  Weeks later, after three committees and a half dozen officials investigated and ruled it justifiable homicide and even gave me commendations for valor and bravery, I turned in my badge and gun for good.

  When you kill a twelve-year-old, all the justification in the world can’t make it better.

  I reached out and gave the lion a gentle stroke on her neck and thought that being a vet would have been a far better way to spend my working years.