Stateline

by Dave Stanton

  “Yeah. Jesus. You know what kills me about it? I’m almost fifty years old, and I haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “What’s that?”

  He raised his eyes, not wondering why I cared, just happy to have someone to talk to, even if it was a stranger.

  “Dan Reno,” I said, and stuck out my hand. He shook my hand with his meaty paw, but his grip had no conviction.

  “Sam McMurray.” He sipped on his drink, then put it down and hit straight off the bottle.

  “I spent fifteen years married to the same woman,” he said. “By the time we got divorced, we could barely stand to be in the same room together. It’s like our whole relationship, everything we ever felt for each other, had slowly eroded, one day at a time, until there was nothing left.” He paused. “So finally I’m free, single, and I’m ready to take control of my life, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I hire this girl to work in my store. She’s young, cheerful, innocent—I didn’t even think about how beautiful she was because she was so young. But somehow we connect, and it goes from there, you know how it is—it happens. She makes me feel like a teenager, like I’m alive again. And then it’s like I’m addicted, and she’s the drug. I can’t stop thinking about her, and then the more I want, the less she gives. I feel like such an idiot, a man my age. God!” He took another swig off his bottle.

  “Beverly Howitt,” I said.

  “What, how, how…do you know her?”

  “She’s in trouble and needs help. Can you tell me where to find her?”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “It happened in Reno. I think she witnessed a murder, and the killer wants to keep her quiet.”

  “How in the world?”

  “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “She’s probably at the hospital with her mother, Glenda.” He looked at his watch. “You leave now, maybe you can catch her.”

  ******

  The hospital was a larger, more modern facility than I expected. My boots echoed off the tile floor as I went through the automatic sliding doors and across the empty admittance area. I asked the duty nurse for Glenda Howitt’s room; she gave me the room number and warned that visiting hours ended in five minutes.

  The door to the room on the third floor was closed. I waited in the hallway, breathing the sterile hospital air. A nurse walked by, pushing an old man in a wheelchair. His skin was spotted and hung from his bones, his fingers stuck out from his plaid robe like bird claws, and his head bobbed slowly as he went by me. I looked away, but a cold hand shot out and grabbed my wrist with surprising strength.

  “I was like you once,” he rasped, his voice thin but forceful, as if a lifetime of hard work and battles had forged an inner strength only death could take from him.

  “I believe you,” I said. The nurse pushed him by without a word.

  Beverly Howitt slipped out into the hallway a couple of minutes later. She wore jeans, tennis shoes, and a pink sweatshirt, and it was easy to see why Sam McMurray had fallen for her. She wore little makeup that I could tell, but she didn’t need to, for she had perfect skin and the face of a beauty queen. Her hair was red with a hint of blonde, and it fell over her ears and onto her neck like a spring waterfall. She looked at me with blue eyes, eyes that were hurt and vulnerable but knowing, and cocked her head.

  “Miss Howitt?” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “My name’s Dan Reno. I flew here from Reno because it’s important we talk.”

  “What about?” she said, licking her lips and blinking.

  “What happened last Friday night in Tahoe.”

  “What?”

  “Miss Howitt, may I call you Beverly?” She nodded. “With your help, the people responsible for what happened can be arrested. As long as they’re still on the streets, you and others are in danger.”

  Her face looked angelic, her lips parting, her blue eyes searching, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Oh god,” she said, and covered her face. I put my arm around her and held her awkwardly, my hand feeling like an uninvited weight on her shoulder.

  ******

  I followed her to a lounge down the street called The Detour. The bar was dark and narrow, but further in the interior opened to a less dimly lit area with a stage and cocktail tables. There was a handful of customers in the bar area. I ordered us two bottles of 3.2 beer, then we went into the back of the place and took a table against the wall.

  She had composed herself, sitting with her arms crossed as if she was cold. Then she took a big swallow off her beer and had a coughing fit.

  “I’m sorry. It went down the wrong way. I can’t even drink right.”

  “Try this,” I said, offering the half-full pint of vodka.

  “Oh.” She smiled, her teeth clicking. “Can you get me an orange juice? No, how about pineapple?”

  I went to the bar and brought back a mixture of Collins mix and fruit juices and made her a drink.

  “Mmm, very good. I bet you’ve been a bartender.”

  “At times.”

  “Really? But you’re a detective now. Sounds exciting.”

  “Just trying to make a living.”

  “Oh, don’t be so modest. I’m sure you have a lot of interesting stories.”

  I made her another drink and one for myself, and an hour later I still hadn’t asked her a question about the case. When I spoke she rested her eyes on mine, laughing at my attempts to be witty, laughing at things I said that most women I dated simply ignored. There was something special about her, and it wasn’t just the way she looked. In the hour we’d been there, she had me relaxed and feeling charming and suave. I wondered if she had that effect on every man she met, or maybe there was a certain chemistry between us. Or maybe she just wanted to avoid talking about the events of last week. I decided it was time to steer the conversation to the issue at hand.

  “We need to talk about what happened in Tahoe.”

  “I don’t quite know where to start,” she said.

  “Tell me everything,” I said, and she did, and then some.

  Beverly Howitt was born in Salina, at a time when America was still hung over from the lingering stages of the hippie era. She remembered her father as a tall, handsome man with long blond hair who never wore a shirt in the summer and worked occasionally as a miner or a laborer. One day when she was around ten years old, he left to look for work, and never came home. Beverly’s mother, Glenda, checked with the police, the local hospitals, called everyone who knew him, and then when there was nothing left to do, she waited by her front window, watching the season turn from fall to winter.

  Eventually Glenda Howitt made do by working a day shift at the supermarket and waiting tables by night. Beverly was left to fend for herself while her mother worked, and the worst part was fighting off the advances of her uncle, who used to live with her aunt in the green house on Third Street. He was a shiftless, mean drunkard; one morning he was found dead in his car outside a bar.

  Beverly waited for her father to return until one night her mother told her flatly, “He’s never coming back. It’s just you and me.” They lived with an unspoken resolve to someday have a better life. But Glenda Howitt never found a suitor worthy of being stepfather to Beverly, and she grew even more selective as time passed. Beverly began attending high school and became promiscuous, looking for comfort and friendship. “I finally found something I was good at, and it was something that gave me control,” she said, but by the time she was a senior, at a time when many of her classmates were just beginning to experiment, she’d come full circle and had stopped dating, even if she knew the boy had honorable intentions.

  Glenda Howitt was diagnosed with breast cancer when Beverly was nineteen. At first the doctors thought there was a non-malignant growth on her chest, but it became more painful as the tumor grew. The cancer spread, and they removed her left breast and later her right. The medical bills rapidly spiraled beyond her means
. Finally the inevitable happened, and Glenda was forced to sell her home. With few options, Beverly and her mother moved in with her aunt, a bitter, frugal widow. The cancer continued to eat away at Glenda Howitt, spreading to her ovaries and lymph nodes. She was spending more time in the hospital than out, and the bills grew as if they were an extension of the cancer itself. The hospital continued to care for her, but sent an aggressive collection agency out of Salt Lake for the payments.

  “We were in trouble; we were almost completely broke, and that’s when I made the decision,” Beverly told me. “I told Mom I got a good job in Reno, that I’d bring money home. I used the last credit on my charge card to buy her a new dress for Christmas, then got on a Greyhound bus. Twelve hours later, on my twenty-second birthday, I was hired by Dana’s.”

  “Were you okay with the work?” I asked.

  “Of course not. I’m not that kind of person.” Her eyes flashed at me like I’d just crawled out of a sewer.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I don’t want to make any assumptions about what a professional escort does.”

  She looked at me, trying to decide whether I was a liar or a fool. But then her eyes softened.

  “Oh, you mean did I go out to dinner or business functions with rich men and get paid three hundred dollars? That actually happened—once. But every other time…” her voice tailed off.

  “After a while you learn to turn your mind off. Click, just like a light switch. Half of the men are so drunk they can’t do it, and then there are ones who just want to talk. It’s almost like being a nurse in a way. But I was good, good at my job.” She looked away, pride and anger etched across her face. “I did it for my mother, and I don’t regret it. But now it’s too late, it’s all meaningless.” I reached over and touched her fingers, and she clenched my wrist tightly with her hands.

  “I have twelve thousand in the bank. But I’ve decided not to pay the hospital another penny. Mom will be gone soon, and she deserves a proper funeral. Screw the hospital and the collectors.”

  I was quiet for a minute, letting the moment go, feeling helpless to say anything that would ease her pain. I could hear the knocking of pool balls and the faint clinking of bottles and glasses from the bar up front.

  “Let’s talk about what happened Friday night,” I said, and her eyes jumped, as if she just remembered why we were there. She leaned back and shuddered.

  “I got a call for a job at the Crown Ambassador Friday around ten-thirty. It was a two-girl party, with a guaranteed three-hundred-fifty rate, plus tips. I was told to meet another girl there, Samantha. I drove myself in my old Plymouth and got there a little before midnight. I met Samantha in the lobby, and she says this guy’s supposed to be a big spender. So we go up to the room, and he lets us in.”

  “Just one guy?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Would you describe him, please?”

  “Oh, about average height, pretty good shape, thinning hair-”

  “Did he pay you cash?”

  “No. He gave Dana’s his credit card number, so it was all prepaid. But I was hoping for a good tip.”

  I figured it must have been Bascom’s credit card, not Osterlund’s, since Osterlund’s credit would have been revoked after his bankruptcy. Sylvester probably hadn’t considered that once he was married, Desiree might have been tempted to take a peek at his credit card statement. A thousand dollar charge to an escort service would be hard to explain. Regardless, the Tahoe police must have a bead on it by now; checking credit card usage would be one of the first things they’d do. Which would lead them to Gloria at Dana’s Escorts, and to Samantha and Beverly. Of the two, Beverly would be easier to find.

  “Okay. So you go in the room.”

  “Yeah. And then, we do…what we do.”

  “Go on.”

  “We were there for about a half an hour, and suddenly Samantha’s standing up, and this strange man is in the room.”

  “Hold on. Did Samantha let him in?”

  “I didn’t see her. I wasn’t looking at the time.”

  “Did Samantha seem surprised?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I remember her putting her clothes on.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Well, I was on top of the trick. We were, well, in the act. The strange man pushed me off the bed and grabbed the trick by the neck and told him to hand over his wallet.”

  “Did he have a knife?”

  “No.”

  “Or gun?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “I’d like you to think back and describe him in as much detail as possible,” I said.

  “Let’s see. He was tall and had on a ratty-looking white t-shirt. His arms were covered with tattoos, and he had blond hair and a long mustache and beard. But not on the side of his face, only over his mouth and on his chin.”

  “A goatee,” I said.

  “Yes. He wore dark blue Levi’s with a thick black belt.”

  “Did Samantha ever say his name?”

  “No.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I was on the ground next to the bed, and the man keeps on saying, ‘Give me your fucking wallet,’ then the closet door flies open, and this guy jumps out, yelling like Bruce Lee or somebody, and kicks the tattooed guy in the head.”

  “Out of the closet?”

  “Yes. It startled me.”

  “Did you know someone was in the closet beforehand?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think he was doing there?”

  “He was spying on us. That was my original impression. When he came out, he was holding this square thing. It looked like it might have been a camera.”

  “Was it a cell phone?”

  “No, it was bigger.”

  “Like a video camera?”

  “I really don’t know what one looks like.”

  I handed her my notepad. “Draw me a picture.”

  She drew a rectangle.

  “That’s it? What color was it? How big was it?”

  “God, it all happened so fast, and I didn’t get that good a look. It was black and maybe six inches long by three or four inches.”

  “Describe the guy in the closet.”

  “Big, muscular, suntanned. He had a crew cut, or a flattop, actually.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “After he jumped out and kicked the tattooed guy, he punched him a couple times—really hard. Then Samantha opens the door, and I thought she was going to run out, but she didn’t, and another man comes in. He had dark skin, but he wasn’t black or Mexican—he looked Hawaiian, maybe. He was medium height, not as tall as you, but he was very big. His body was shaped like an oak barrel, and his face, I can’t even describe it—I’ve never seen a scarier looking person.”

  She pressed her fingers to her temples and looked like she might be ill. I started to say something, but she interrupted.

  “I’ll be okay, just give me a second.” She squeezed her eyes tight, took a couple breaths, then started again.

  “The ugly, dark-skinned man grabbed the guy with the flattop. Then the naked guy, the trick, he gets up and starts punching at the tattooed guy and the dark one. I was hiding on the other side of the bed, and then, and then, this all happened so fast, but then I heard this terrible sound, and when I looked up I saw the knife come through his back. I wanted to scream, and I tried to, but I was so scared no sound would come. The flattop guy ran out, and the dark one was holding this huge knife, dripping blood. I stayed curled up next to the bed with my hands over my eyes, shaking I was so scared, and then they were gone.”

  “Did you hear them say anything?”

  “They were cussing, but that’s about it.”

  “Did they say anything to you?”

  “No, but I was hiding on the floor next to the bed. They just ignored me and left.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I got up, and when I saw the body, I freaked. There was so much blood
, it was pumping out of him. I panicked and threw up on the floor. When I looked at him again, his eyes were open but not moving. I ran out, and I forgot which way the elevators were, so I took the stairs and got to my car. But I was too scared to drive all the way to Reno, so I drove the other way and found a little hotel in Myers. I stayed there until five A.M., dozed a little, then I drove to my apartment in Reno, threw my stuff in a suitcase, and drove and drove until I got back to Salina.”

  I wanted to ask her more questions, press for more details, but she didn’t look well. I touched her hand, and we sat in the silence of the room for a few minutes until the bartender said, “Closing time, folks.”

  When we reached her car she still looked shaky, and I asked if she was okay to drive. She paused, then said quietly, “I don’t want to be alone tonight. Can I go with you?”

  She followed me back up the interstate to Salina, to the hotel where I was staying. It was almost midnight when we parked in front of my room. We went in, and I tossed a pillow on the floor.

  “No, you don’t have to,” she said, but I told her to take the bed. Then I lay down on the floor in my clothes, with my jacket as a blanket, and slept.

  Somewhere in the dark dreaminess of night, a voice drifted on the outskirts of my consciousness, calling my name from some distant place. I tried to ignore it, but the voice persisted, pulling me out of my dreamscape and into the fuzzy blackness of the room.

  “You’re talking in your sleep,” she said, kneeling over me. “Come to bed.”

  ******

  The gray dawn seeped into the room through the thin curtains. I felt the warmth of Beverley’s body and the steadiness of her breathing. I reached down to check that my jeans were on, and my breath caught in my throat when my hand brushed her bare thigh. I moved away from her and closed my eyes, hoping for deep slumber and pure dreams. But my mind wouldn’t shut off, and I had that restless insomnia that often haunts me after drinking. So I lay next to Beverly Howitt, and my thoughts wandered to my past as I waited out the morning.

  After losing my first job out of college with Bill Ortega, I swore off the booze and was hired by Ray Lorretta Bail Bonds. I spent the next three years dead sober, until I went to work for Wenger. Thinking back, I remembered that one of my greatest fears of drying out had been boredom. I learned that it takes a while after going sober to figure out how to replace all those hours previously spent on a barstool. But I quickly saw that working for Ray Lorretta was a lifestyle that was anything but boring. Ray was one of about thirty bail bondsmen in the San Jose area, and he lived at a wildly fast pace.