Hard Prejudice: A Hard-Boiled Crime Novel: (Dan Reno Private Detective Noir Mystery Series) (Dan Reno Novel Series Book 5)

by Dave Stanton

  After a mile the path steepened. The grade increased for another half mile until the trail became narrow and rocks and ledges made jogging impossible. I stopped in a shady area a hundred feet below the base of a waterfall that gushed with snow melt. A fine mist hit my face when I looked up at the torrent breaking over the granite cliff. I lowered myself to pushup position and drank from the stream. Then I headed back home, where Cody Gibbons lay in a lounge chair, drinking beers and catching rays as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  4

  By nine o’clock the next morning Cody and I were on the road, heading west toward San Jose. It’s a four-hour drive, up over Echo Summit at 7,300 feet, then down fifty miles of winding two-lane through the El Dorado National Forest, until the road widens in the foothills above Placerville. After that it’s mundane freeway driving through the low lands of Sacramento, past towns with names like Davis and Dixon, until the interstate veers south toward Santa Clara County. An hour later you come off a hill, and a large, densely built valley appears. Silicon Valley, some out-of-towners still call it. Home to many of the world’s top technology companies. Mostly orchard land before the computer boom, but now every acre is fully developed. A million dollars buys what would be considered a modest home in most parts of the United States. Despite the expensive real estate, immigrants still flock here. Those with a college background come for engineering or marketing jobs. Those without the education work in service professions or as laborers. Almost two million people live in the valley, and despite the lingering recession, that equates to a lot of jobs.

  At the heart of the valley is San Jose. It’s a sprawling city, but to me it still feels like a podunk town. A small collection of modest high-rises marks the downtown, while the rest of the city fans out in a blend of residential neighborhoods, shopping centers, and business parks. Ask people what’s special about San Jose, and they’ll tell you two things: first, the jobs, and second, the climate can’t be beat. As for the city’s personality, it’s like that of a quiet, unremarkable child in the shadow of a more rambunctious and interesting sibling. San Francisco, fifty miles north, is what most people think of as the heart of Northern California. San Jose, despite its emergence as an economic powerhouse, is an afterthought. I know this, because I lived in San Jose most of my life.

  While Cody had been out to dinner with Ryan Addison’s assistant the night before, I’d logged onto a subscription site and compiled a profile on Duante Tucker. He was twenty-five years old, and in his public record were two incidents of juvenile assault. As an adult he’d been arrested twice, once for aggravated assault and once for dealing. Both arrests occurred in the ghettos near Los Angeles, and neither resulted in a conviction. Except for the recent incident in Tahoe, Tucker’s record was clean for the three years he’d reportedly lived in San Jose.

  There was no mention of Tucker’s mother among his relatives, but I found names for his father and sister. Shanice Tucker was three years younger than Duante. She’d been convicted for prostitution when she was eighteen, but other than that there was no information available on her. No current address or employer listed.

  The public record for the father, Lamar Tucker, was more extensive. Lamar Tucker had owned real estate in and around Compton and had a lengthy criminal record that included a mayhem charge. There was no detail as to the charge, but he had been convicted for that and other violent offenses. Whether or not he was still in prison, I couldn’t tell.

  I called Cody’s cell as I followed him on the freeway west of Sacramento. We’d not had time to speak this morning because I was anxious to get on the road. He’d woken late and I’d rushed him out of the house.

  “How’d your date with Miss Charming go last night?” I asked.

  “Not bad, I guess,” he said. “She’s a weird one.”

  “How so?”

  “Her grand idea is to write a screenplay based on Lindsey’s rape. She’s offering me a part in the movie if I tell her the details from our investigation.”

  I laughed. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

  “Yeah, I admit it’s a little farfetched.”

  “So, what’d you tell her?”

  “I said I’m not an actor, and besides, I’m not sure if I want my handsome mug splashed all over the silver screen. She got kind of pouty and bitchy when I told her that, and then she cuddled up and pulled out the heavy artillery.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She said she gives life-changing blow jobs, and she’ll prove it to me once I deliver the goods.”

  “Now, that’s raw ambition. It piqued your interest, I take it?”

  “Wouldn’t it peak yours?”

  “Not from her,” I said.

  “Well, you’re married, or you might as well be, so who cares?”

  “Not me, that’s for sure.”

  We hung up, and I called Candi. She didn’t pick up, but I knew she’d ring back when she saw I called. It was two hours later where she was visiting her folks in Houston, and I imagined she might be sitting down to lunch. Her father was a lawman, and Candi had grown up on a ranch before spending her teenage years in the Houston suburbs. She was vivacious and smart and had an hourglass figure that still drove me to distraction. She also understood my work and was more tolerant than any woman I’d ever met. Still, she wouldn’t be thrilled I was working with Cody again. She liked him, but was wary of his ways, as any sane person would be. But she knew he’d saved my life before and would not hesitate to do so again. If it ever came to that.

  • • •

  Cody’s office was on the second floor of an older building in downtown San Jose. The building was in San Pedro Square, the city’s hotspot for dining and nightlife. We walked down an alley and up a rickety flight of stairs. His small office was above a Mexican restaurant, and the aroma of tortillas and seasoned meats permeated the room.

  Cody opened the shades, and sunlight burst through the hazy darkness. He picked up the phone on his scarred oak desk and asked someone to bring us a couple specials.

  “You’re gonna love this. They make the best burritos in town,” he said.

  “When did you move here?”

  “A few months ago. The Sanchez family gave me cheap rent after I helped them out with a little trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I asked.

  “A biker took a liking to Tina, the daughter. She wasn’t interested, but he wouldn’t get the message. So I helped with the communication.”

  “You spoke his language, huh?”

  “I suppose you could say that. I kicked him in the balls so hard they’re probably still stuck in his throat.”

  “Nice,” I said. I looked from the scuffed floor to the wood-paneled walls, which were covered with framed Forty-Niner and Oakland Raider pictures. Behind the desk, Cody’s bounty hunter and private investigator’s license hung beneath a Schlitz Malt Liquor mirror. I lowered myself into a folding metal chair, and said, “Where do you want to start with Tucker?”

  “We’ve got an address. Let’s spin on by after lunch.”

  “Incognito, right? I want to tail him for a day or two.”

  Before Cody could reply, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to see a boy about ten years old, holding two Styrofoam containers. He had a shock of black hair and skinny brown arms.

  “Hey, Pedro. Qué pasa, little man?”

  “Not much, Mr. Cody.” He set the containers on the desk, and Cody handed him a twenty.

  “Keep the change, okay, buddy?”

  “Okay.” He smiled, and we heard him run down the stairs.

  “If we’re gonna do surveillance, we better use my rig,” Cody said, opening one of the containers.

  “Your red truck?” I said.

  “No, not my red truck. What do you think I am, some kind of jackass?”

  “What, then?”

  “I never told you about the hellfire hooptie, did I?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  �
�Ah. Well, today’s your lucky day.”

  • • •

  After we finished eating, I followed Cody to his home a few miles southwest, near the border of San Jose and Los Gatos. He had bought the place a decade ago, when he was married, and when the marriage ended, he managed to keep it. Almost half the homes in the neighborhood had since been rebuilt into two-story mini-mansions of various styles. The other half, which included Cody’s, were cookie-cutter, three-bed-two-bath houses built in the late 1940s, during the postwar prosperity.

  I parked on the street and walked behind Cody’s pickup as it crunched down a long tar-and-gravel driveway that led to an oversized garage in the rear of his lot. The garage door opened, and he pulled in next to a maroon sedan. He got in the car and backed it out into the sun.

  I looked at the vehicle and shrugged. It was an older-model Toyota four-door. One of the rims didn’t match the others, and someone had keyed the faded paint along the rear quarter panel.

  “What do you think?” Cody said.

  I walked around the car. The front bumper was badly scuffed on one side.

  “It’s the kind of ride you buy for a thousand bucks when you can’t afford anything better,” I said.

  “Exactly, my friend.” He came behind me and clasped his hand on top of my shoulder. “A 1988 Toyota Camry. Mundane. Nondescript. And dig the ugly color. You see this ride parked at the curb, your eyes glaze over, and you look away. It’s the perfect undercover car.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Is it reliable?”

  “Funny you should ask. Check it out.” He popped the hood to reveal a gleaming engine.

  “New motor?”

  “New, and supercharged. Four hundred fifty horses, baby. All the running gear is completely redone. Tranny, brakes, suspension. This thing is so goddamned fast I almost killed myself when I first drove it. I had to take two weekends of racing school at Sears Point before I felt comfortable.”

  “I always thought you were a pretty good driver,” I said.

  “No. This is totally different. You’ll see. Come on, let’s go.”

  Cody climbed into the driver’s seat, which must have been lowered, because instead of his head nearly touching the ceiling, he looked like a man of average height. I got in and buckled my seat belt, and we backed down the driveway.

  “It doesn’t feel like anything special,” I said as we rolled down his street. The engine was quiet and smooth, like an ordinary car. Cody shifted the manual transmission into second gear, and we turned out of his neighborhood onto the main thoroughfare. We stopped at a traffic signal.

  “See any cops around?” he said. We were first in line at the light.

  “No.”

  When the light turned green, Cody mashed the accelerator and we launched off the line with a neck-snapping jerk. We were doing forty by the time we crossed the intersection, and Cody hit second with his foot on the floor. The freeway on-ramp was coming up on the right. He snapped the gearshift into third, and I looked over and saw the speedometer moving past eighty.

  “Cody,” I said. The on-ramp looked tight, and we were approaching it at a suicidal speed. I reached up and clutched the chicken bar above the passenger door. He grabbed fourth gear, and we catapulted forward. I felt the muscles in my legs tighten as I pushed back in the seat. If we missed the turn—and that was becoming a near certainty—we would fly off a dip into a thick stand of maple trees.

  At the last possible instant, Cody downshifted, hit the brakes hard, then accelerated through the sweeping turn. The tires howled and slid, but Cody counter-steered and stayed on the gas. The Camry came out of the turn at a hundred before Cody eased up.

  I exhaled. “I hope you don’t do that on a regular basis.”

  “Please don’t wet your pants in my car,” he said. “That’s one of my rules.”

  We drove along 280, heading south, and took the 101 interchange. After a couple miles, we exited onto Tully Road and headed into east San Jose.

  Like any metropolis, Santa Clara County has a variety of socioeconomic zones. West and central San Jose, despite patches of slummy areas, cater mostly to a solid middleclass. South San Jose offers less expensive real estate and can be a little rough around the edges. The same holds true for north San Jose. Santa Clara County’s wealthy typically reside outside of San Jose, in posh communities along the mountains, like Los Gatos, Saratoga, and Cupertino.

  As for the valley’s poor, east San Jose has long been their domain. When I grew up, I remember an east side populated evenly by blacks and Mexicans. When the population exploded with the computer boom, the racial demographic changed. Today, the poor part of town is dominated by Mexican and Vietnamese families. African Americans have become a small minority.

  “Hang a left here,” I said, looking at my GPS. We turned onto a street where the houses had tar roofs and were separated by chain link fences. I rolled down the window. Ninety degrees of dry heat hit my face. I pointed, and Cody turned down a narrow lane that was crisscrossed overhead with telephone wires. Most of the yards were hard-packed dirt, and some served as parking spaces for junkers, or shiny rides probably bought with drug money. Gang graffiti coated every suitable surface, and the windows were braced with iron security bars.

  “Next right,” I said as we approached a corner where a squad of young Asians gave us the deadeye. In the driveway of the corner house were two gleaming Japanese coupes with aftermarket rims and spoilers. Two men wrenched under the hood of one.

  “I got a faster rice burner than you,” Cody muttered.

  Duante Tucker’s street was semipaved and lined with vehicles. I watched the street numbers until we came to a white stucco house with a blue door. A black GMC Yukon sat in the driveway.

  We neared the end of the street. “Turn around and find somewhere to park,” I said.

  “You sure that’s the car?”

  I reached to the rear seat and took a folder from my bag as Cody hung a U-turn and drove slowly by the house.

  “Yeah. Registered to the roommate, Lennox Suggs. It’s the one Tucker drove to Tahoe.”

  We drove to the opposite end of the street and turned around again, looking for somewhere to park that offered a view of the house Duante Tucker reportedly rented with Lennox Suggs. But the street was packed with cars, and there wasn’t a single spot open.

  “Shit,” Cody said.

  “What about here?” On the opposite side of the street, three houses from Tucker’s address, a flat-roofed home had a ‘For Rent’ sign in the front window. The yard was waist-high in dead weeds, and two-by-fours were nailed across the door.

  Cody slowed and backed into the driveway, until we could just see around a work van parked in the neighbor’s driveway.

  “Not bad,” I said, and lowered the window. From our position we had a decent view of Tucker’s residence.

  We sat in silence for five minutes. The hope is always to get quick action on a surveillance. It rarely happens.

  An hour passed. The car was hot, and my back was stuck to my shirt. There was no shade to be had, and nothing stirred at the Tucker house. It looked like a blanket had been hung inside the single window facing the street. The paint on the door was peeling, and rusty streaks stained the stucco below a gutter that hung limply from the roofline. It was quiet, and the air smelled of dust and motor oil, and when a warm breeze rattled the weeds, I caught a whiff of raw sewage.

  “I wonder if that dump has air conditioning,” Cody said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “You think they’re sitting in there watching TV?”

  “Maybe. They probably have fans,” I said.

  “I’d like to get in there and bug the place.” Cody looked at me. A drop of sweat ran down along his sideburn.

  “We should probably figure out if anyone’s home first.”

  “Got any ideas?”

  “We got company,” I said. Two of them, walking diagonally at us from the other side of the street. Pants baggy and low on the hips, white T-
shirts, chains dangling from belt loops, and red bandanas covering their heads. Cholos.

  “What’s up, homes?” The first man stood a couple feet from my window. I couldn’t see his face.

  “Nada,” I said.

  “You looking for something, man?” he said. His Chicano barrio accent was a gravelly whine, thick with menace and intimidation.

  “Nope.”

  He dropped to a crouch, and his face suddenly appeared. He had a stringy mustache and a busted nose that hadn’t healed right.

  “You look like cops,” he said with a smirk. “You the heat?”

  I looked in his dark eyes. One was half-lidded, but the other was wide open. “Not us,” I said.

  “Then you better get gone, pronto. You get what I’m saying?”

  “This your turf?”

  “Simone. And you’re on it.”

  “Hey,” Cody said. “This your turf, what’s up with the spades that live over there?”

  The Latino cut his eyes at Tucker’s place, and when he responded, a hint of passivity replaced the aggression in his voice. “It’s a free country, homes. Besides, it’s only one negro, and I got no beef with him.” He grunted at the other Latino, and they turned without further comment and walked back the way they’d come.

  “What do you make of that?” I said.

  “He sure adjusted his attitude quick.”

  “Like he respects Tucker. Or Lennox Suggs. Or both.”

  Cody lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke out the window. “He said only one negro.”

  I stared at the house, my face squinted against the sun. The cholos had headed the opposite direction and the street was quiet.

  “I’m gonna go knock on the door,” I said. “Be back in a minute.”

  I strode across the street and along the cracked, uneven sidewalk, paused at the black GMC, then quick-stepped up to the door and rapped twice with my knuckles. Instantly the stillness was interrupted by loud barking. I darted back around the GMC and behind a panel-bed truck parked on the street just as two pit bulls rushed at the chain link fence securing the side yard.