Dying for the Highlife

by Dave Stanton

  “Tattoos are fashionable these days.”

  “Really? Do you have one?”

  “I’ll never tell.”

  “My sister thinks he’s in a gang, like the Mexican Mafia,” Lou said, his face serious again. “You ever hear of anything so crazy?”

  She dried his hair and began clipping. The salon was mostly empty, and they were in a semiprivate nook. Her perfume was vaguely tropical, and when she moved around him, her hip brushed his shoulder.

  “The world’s a crazy place,” she said, and he waited for her to say more, but she had put down her scissors and was looking through her drawer for the right attachment to her electric trimmer.

  “Would you be concerned if you were me?” Lou asked.

  “I can’t really say,” she said.

  When she was finished, Lou admired her work in the mirror.

  “Very nicely done,” he said, and handed her an extra ten, their hands touching.

  “By the way, do you have plans for dinner tonight?” he asked.

  “You’re sweet, but sorry, I never date customers.”

  “That’s a shame,” Lou said, and walked out of the salon into the bland, overcast day. “A damn shame,” he muttered, as he clicked his seat belt and headed toward the freeway leading back to South Lake Tahoe.

  34

  The Carson City Library occupied a corner a block off the main drag. The faded brick structure was surrounded by maple and ash trees, but fall had come early this year, and the branches overhead were bare and colorless. I stood inside looking out the window at a group of teenagers playing basketball in the adjacent school yard. A shirtless kid with brown skin sank a nice jump shot. It started to rain, but they played on. Eventually Cody waved at me, and I walked back to where he sat behind my laptop.

  “Any luck calling Jimmy?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Still goes straight to voice mail.”

  “I e-mailed my hacker buddy. He’ll let me know when Jimmy gets online again, and maybe he can trace the IP address.”

  “I tried to get John Homestead’s cell number,” I said. “No luck. You have any friends left at San Jose PD who would call the phone company for us?”

  Cody smiled. “Not a chance.

  I sighed and sat in the chair next to him.

  “I guess we could stake out the repair garage,” he said.

  “I suppose that’s an option.”

  “Yeah, but why bother? Your device will let us know when the Lamborghini’s on the road again. Let’s go kill some time.”

  Which of course meant finding the nearest bar. I looked at my watch. “It’s noon somewhere, Dirt,” Cody said.

  We walked into a nameless joint with a horseshoe-shaped bar and slot machines lining the walls. The early day crowd was rife with missing teeth and wino breath. A dense brume of cigarette smoke hung above the drinkers, like a radioactive cloud. When we sat, a middle-aged woman with a plaid shirt and pigtails shuffled over to me. Her face was weathered beyond her years, her teeth and gums dark when she spoke.

  “Stay away from the slots in this dump,” she said.

  The bartender raised his voice, and she wandered away, muttering a steam of babble about an unjust and piss-poor world. Cody and I drank up and split.

  “I’ve been to funerals that were a better time than that shithole,” he said.

  “Let’s go get some lunch,” I said. But before we made it through the next light my cell rang. It was one of the attorneys I had solicited earlier in the week.

  “My client’s husband is leaving tomorrow on a business trip to Salt Lake City,” she said. “She suspects he has some extracurricular activities arranged. As we discussed, the more incriminating the photos, the better.”

  I pulled over and jotted down the necessary details. Then I snapped my phone shut and hung a U-turn.

  “What’s up?” Cody said.

  “You said you wanted to kill some time. How about putting Jimmy on the back burner for a few days?”

  “Why?”

  “I got a paying gig. You up for a road trip?”

  “Where to, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Utah, for a couple days.”

  “That’s a hell of a road trip. You sure you want to leave town?”

  “I need the money.”

  Cody shrugged. “I guess we can track down Jimmy when we get back.”

  “Sometimes a little benign neglect is a good thing,” I said.

  “Or not,” Cody replied, “but what do I know?”

  • • •

  By midafternoon we were heading eastbound on Highway 80. Four hundred miles of high desert lay ahead, the land parched and cold under a pale blue sky banked with faint clouds. Vast fields of sagebrush and dry grass lined the road and stretched as far as the eye could see. The monotony of the flat terrain was occasionally broken by a random pinyon or bristlecone pine, but otherwise the country was featureless.

  “Empty territory,” I said.

  “Empty, and dry too. How far until the next truck stop?” Cody said.

  “Lovelock is an hour away. Tell your liver it will get a break until then.”

  “Damn. We should have picked up beer in Reno.”

  East of Winnemucca we dropped into a shallow valley and began climbing a short grade. The highway sliced through the rock-strewn pastures, the landscape jagged with treeless bluffs and mesas that jutted from the earth’s crust like massive burial mounds. We crossed a short bridge and passed over a gully that fell away into a steep canyon, the walls serrated and strangely uniform, as if carved by a mason to the gods. In the distance, a deeply shadowed ridge rose into the gray clouds along the northern horizon. Cody gave up trying to find a radio station with decent reception and tossed his empty beer can into the backseat.

  “Let’s stop at Elko for dinner,” he said.

  “Yeah, my ass is about wore out. Crack me another beer, would you?”

  We rolled into Elko in time to see the last of the sunset, the low clouds lit with purple fire, the sky above florescent and twinkling with starlight. Halfway down the main drag, we stopped at the Pioneer Hotel and Saloon. Inside, the old lounge was crowded with a party of some sort. We elbowed our way to the bar and ordered steaks and whiskey.

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked the bartender.

  “It’s our annual arts festival. We get poets, musicians, and painters from all over the place.”

  A couple of whiskeys later, I felt myself crossing the line from a slight buzz to a pleasant drunk. I struck up a conversation with a pretty black-haired woman in a leather jacket who was trying to order a drink. We talked for a while before I realized Cody was no longer at the bar. I heard a commotion and spotted him at a table with a group of people, telling what was apparently an uproarious story. A buxom redhead wearing a frilly dress clung to his arm. Her eyes had an alcoholic shine and her exaggerated expressions made me think of a circus clown.

  “Your friend?” the brunette asked me.

  “For as long as I can remember.”

  “He better watch out for that fire crotch. She’s screwed everything with pants in this town.”

  “My god, do you think I should warn him?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  Somehow we ended up at a house a few miles outside of town. It was a large, ranch-style spread built on a lot surrounded by nothing but open plains. The interior was done in polished woods, except for a massive stone fireplace that covered an entire wall. Full-length windows looked out over a backyard party, complete with heat lamps, a side of beef, beer kegs, and a hired bartender. Beyond the yard, miles of grazing pasture lay under the moonlit sky.

  In my blur of drunkenness, I was perplexed at the bizarre mix of people gathered at the place. A woman about seventy was reading poetry in one room to ten college-aged kids who listened in absolute silence. In another room, a man played the banjo and harmonica and sang about a cattle drive. In the main room, a writer who wrote a book I had read years ago began rea
ding passages from his new novel in front of the roaring fireplace. His audience became distracted when a topless female with a six-foot snake wrapped around her torso walked in the front door. The writer hurried outside to the bar and spent the remainder of the night there.

  All the while, folks dressed as if attending a Renaissance fair roamed about, sipping wine and discussing the western art murals that covered the walls. Searching for a bathroom, I opened the door to a bedroom where a half dozen men huddled over a mirror lined with cocaine. Outside, speakers blared ZZ Top, and at least twenty people were dancing on the patio, gyrating and pumping as if they hoped an orgy would break out. I spotted Cody near the roasting pit, holding a knife, cutting huge slices of rare beef and eating with his bare hands. He was wearing a rawhide leather coat with fringes that someone must have given him.

  “I guess we’re not gonna make it to Salt Lake tonight,” I said.

  He looked at me in surprise, then grinned, his teeth bloody. “Make it to where?”

  • • •

  When I woke the next morning, I had no idea where I was. Indoors, fortunately. In bed, in a strange room. And still drunk. I sat up and smelled perfume. Fragments of the night began to dance around in my head, but I wasn’t quite sure until the black-haired lady I’d met early in the evening walked in stark naked and parked her shapely ass next to me.

  “Coffee, tea, or me?” she said.

  “How about a Bloody,” I croaked. “Or if that’s too much to ask, whiskey will do.”

  “Take these first,” she said, handing me a fistful of pills and a glass of water. “Then take a shower, cowboy, and I’ll bring you further medication.” I groaned and made my way into the bathroom, and a minute later, her hand reached through the shower curtain and handed me a Bloody Mary, complete with a celery stick.

  “You are a rare woman,” I said, guzzling half the drink as hot water pounded on my back. I wondered what time it was. The thought was quickly lost when I stepped out of the shower into a soft towel she held. “Don’t even think about leaving yet,” she said, dropping to her knees. Then she led me to the bed and made me regret my poor memory, but she made damn sure I’d remember the morning. I finally disengaged from her limbs an hour later and found my truck beached on the sidewalk in front of her place. She gave me directions to the house where the party had been held, and promised to visit the next time she came west. The idea brought a happy anticipation to my chest, even made me feel a bit giddy, but maybe that was just the booze.

  • • •

  Finding Cody, on the other hand, didn’t go so smoothly. I knocked on the front door to the ranch house, and when no one answered, I turned the unlocked doorknob and went in. Leftovers were scattered about, asleep on couches, and more were in the bedrooms I peeked into, but Cody was nowhere to be found. Out in the backyard two men smoked and sucked on drinks. I assumed they’d pulled a sunrise show, up all night on cocaine, and were trying to consume enough liquor to come down and pass out. I wandered out to a large barn I hadn’t noticed the night before. Frost coated the prairie, and a cold wind had kicked up. I was anxious to get on the road.

  Cody lay atop a pile of hay in a corner of the barn, wrapped in a mass of furry blankets, his bearded face serenely asleep. When I tried to wake him, I saw he wasn’t alone.

  “Come on, get your ass up, Cody,” I whispered. “I need to be in Salt Lake.” He moaned as he came to, then shushed me and threw his clothes on. Ten minutes later we were in my truck heading down the road.

  “The barn?” I said.

  “We couldn’t find an open bedroom. Christ, she was a nut case. She got a big kick out of doing it in the hay, but afterward she just wouldn’t shut up. I was trying to sleep, but she was babbling all sorts of crazy shit, nonstop. It was starting to really piss me off.”

  “Sounds like you fucked her silly.”

  We laughed at that as much as our hangovers would allow, then found a diner at the edge of town, where we ate breakfast and drank coffee until our heads cleared. Then we drove back out to the desert, east on 80, through Wendover, Nevada, and across the salt flats into Utah.

  • • •

  At two P.M. we were in position at the Salt Lake City Airport. The skies were overcast and dull, the city blanketed in gray. To the east, the granite faces of the Wasatch Range, streaked with early snowfall, rose above the valley and merged with the clouds. Cody stayed in my truck, parked outside the rental car parking lot, while I waited in the terminal for the flight from Reno to land. I picked up the subject as he left the security area. He was a short man, dark haired, narrow hips and wide shoulders, his blue pinstriped business suit well-tailored. He strode at a brisk pace, the flaps of his overcoat trailing behind him. We walked along the overpass to the rental car counter, and I returned to my truck. A minute later, the man drove off in a blue Ford Taurus, and Cody and I followed him out of the airport.

  We waited for him to finish a three o’clock meeting at a downtown high-rise, then spent an hour outside his hotel, a small, single-story complex north of the city. When he came out of his room he’d lost his tie, and his hair was still wet. He drove away like a man with a purpose.

  The bar at the Mexican restaurant was big and crowded, which made for easy surveillance. A much younger woman, wearing a tight red skirt and white blouse, met him at the bar. They ordered drinks, and soon her hand was on his thigh. I snapped a few discrete pictures with my cell. Cody waved down a waitress, and before long, a huge plate of nachos and a pitcher of margaritas arrived at our table.

  An hour later I took more pictures of the couple as they parked and walked into his hotel room.

  “Too easy,” I said.

  “Let’s go back to the restaurant and get another pitcher. You’ve got all you need, right?”

  “No. I want to wait until she leaves so I can document it.”

  “What? What if she spends the night?”

  “You can get a room. I’ll wait here.”

  Cody was silent for a minute, then he picked up my 35mm camera and started fiddling with it. He clicked off a couple photos of the parking lot.

  “What are you doing?”

  “How do you turn the flash on?”

  “That button. Why?”

  “Wait here,” he said, then left my truck and walked to the hotel office.

  “What now?” I muttered. I peered toward the office, and had started out of the truck when I saw him come out the door. He waved me off and went down the walkway to the couple’s room. I stood outside my truck and watched him insert a key in the door and go inside. A scream and shouted curses ensued, and a few seconds later Cody was running toward me, a huge, irreverent grin on his face, his eyes wild with glee.

  “Start the motor, let’s boogie!”

  As I roasted the tires and bounced off the curb into the street, I caught a glimpse of the man’s outraged face in the doorway.

  “Hoo-wee, wait until you see these shots!” Cody exclaimed. “He had her buns up kneelin’, and he was wheelin’ and dealin’. You should have been there.”

  “It was supposed to be a covert operation, Cody. The guy wasn’t supposed to know he was being watched.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s a divorce case, right? These pictures cut to the bottom line. Your client is gonna love you for this.”

  After a few miles we pulled over at a neighborhood lounge near the airport. We sat in a booth and I checked out the photos Cody had taken. I had to admit he’d hit pay dirt. The expressions on the couple’s faces as they tried unsuccessfully to hide their nakedness were comically distorted. One picture in particular was both graphic and hilarious, and despite my anger at Cody for his spur of the moment role in my investigation, I fell into a fit of punch-drunk laughter. Cody smiled and winked at me, holding up a tall glass.

  “To the good times, Dirt, to road trips and road beers and loose women and bars and easy paychecks and no worries.”

  How could a man not drink to that?

  • • •<
br />
  The following afternoon, after a relatively mild night in Salt Lake, we drove back to Reno and then south to Carson City. I wanted to continue over the pass to South Lake Tahoe, but Cody suggested we stop at the library in Carson.

  “His car hasn’t left that garage, right?” he said.

  “I’d have been sent an alert if it did.”

  “So he’s probably still local. Let’s go use the wireless hotspot at the library. I want to check a couple things.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll type up my case report and e-mail it to the lawyer while we’re there.”

  Cody began working on one of the library PCs while I downloaded the photos from my camera onto my computer. A few minutes later he interrupted me.

  “Guess what? Jimmy Homestead is logged onto an e-mail account right now.”

  “Where?”

  “The IP address has a longitude and latitude in Reno. My hacker buddy is dialing in the exact location. In ten minutes he’ll be sending me an address.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “Always the skeptic,” Cody smiled, slapping my back and drumming a quick cadence on the table with his knuckles.

  35

  It was Sunday, and Jimmy and John Homestead were lounging around, watching football and eating roast beef sandwiches, when John heard his cell ring. He hauled himself off the couch and retrieved it from the bedroom.

  “John, it’s Lou Calgaretti. Everything okay there?”

  “Sure. All quiet. Why?”

  “Just checking. I’m driving back to Tahoe from San Jose. Is your son there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you put me on the speaker, and I’ll give you an update.”

  John brought the phone to the living room and turned off the TV.

  “I found nothing to support Sheila’s claims she has any association or involvement with a Mexican drug dealing ring,” Lou said.

  “You’re sure about this?” John said.

  “I checked her phone records and tailed her for a few days. I even visited her for a haircut. If she has any connection, I could find no sign of it.”