Stateline

by Dave Stanton

  I nodded.

  “Pace had been a county sheriff in Louisiana,” he continued, “and even though there were rumors of trouble from down South, he won the election here easily because there was little opposition. The previous sheriff had retired, and Pace came into town and ran a slick campaign. When Pace took office, he started weeding out the minorities and bringing in his own people. Perdie? Supposedly he’s Pace’s cousin. And Fingsten is his nephew. I had been somewhat removed from his workings since the county office is down in Placerville. But when he forced me to hire Perdie and Fingsten, I started to understand what he was up to. Those clowns don’t do much to hide it.

  “Pace somehow got hooked up with Salvador Tuma, a mobster originally from New York. The Tuma family is heavily involved in casino interests in Vegas and Atlantic City. Once Tuma and Pace got in bed together, Tuma set up a drug dealing hub in Placerville that supplies the Central Valley, Sacramento, Stockton, down to Modesto, and also the Tahoe and Reno area. They run everything; coke, meth, ecstasy, pot, you name it. Tuma put his son Jake in charge of the operation. I imagine under Pace’s protection, they’ve made boatloads of money. Pace is getting a healthy cut—you ought to see the mansion he lives in out at Granite Bay. Anyway, Michael Dean Stiles, the man you shot? He worked for Jake Tuma. And so does Julo Nafui. He handles collections and discourages competitors.”

  “So that’s why you let Jake Tuma skate that night at Zeke’s.”

  “Yes. He gets a free pass, thanks to Pace.”

  “What about the local police departments? Aren’t they on to Pace by now?”

  “Pace is an extremely effective manipulator, and he’s also cunning and ruthless. Somehow nothing ever sticks to him. He’s slicker than owl shit.”

  “How about Raneswich and Iverson?”

  “Raneswich is dirty. Iverson, I don’t know.”

  “Did you quit your job?” I asked.

  “No. Although I considered it every day for the last six months. What happened was Perdie and Fingsten were both incompetent and spending a lot of time tending to Tuma’s drug business. I chewed them out the other day, and twenty-four hours later Pace fired me for misconduct.”

  I picked up a piece of paper and wrote the phone number of the Sacramento journalist that John Bascom gave me.

  “Call this guy, Marcus,” I said, handing him the phone number. “He’s from the Sacramento Bee, and he’s familiar with some of the recent events involving Pace and his crew. With your input, he’ll be able get a running start on hanging Pace out to dry.”

  We stood to leave. Grier stared at the piece of paper in his hand.

  “Who did that to your dog?” I said.

  “It was Perdie. Had to be. It’s his style. There was a note pinned to the body saying I’m next unless I keep my mouth shut.”

  When we drove away, Grier was still on his porch, studying the piece of paper I’d given him.

  CHAPTER 24

  “We got a problem now, Cuz,” Louis Perdie said to Conrad Pace, the phone sweaty against his cheek. “Reno and his buddy were at Pistol Pete’s earlier today and ended up in Sal Tuma’s office.”

  Pace’s eyes jumped under his furrowed brow. “They talked to Tuma? This some kind of joke, Louis?’

  “No, sir, and there’s more. They just left Marcus Grier’s house.”

  Pace squeezed his eyes shut and felt his ears reddening. “Louis, you need to make goddamn sure you know what you’re talking about.”

  “One of our guys is following them now.”

  Pace exhaled, and calmness slowly replaced his anger, an emotional response he attached to the inevitability of what must be done.

  “Tell him not to lose them. I’ll call Julo Nafui.”

  ******

  “Now I know what Michael Dean Stiles meant by his last words,” I said, as we drove away from Grier’s house.

  “What’s that?”

  “He said, ‘The sheriff.’ I thought he meant Marcus Grier. But he was talking about Conrad Pace.”

  Cody grunted. “You know what I don’t get?” he said. “You got a casino guy paying off a sheriff so he can run a drug ring. You got Michael Dean Stiles, AKA Mr. One Eight Seven, and Julo whatever the fuck helping run the show. But how does that tie in to Bascom’s murder? What’s the connection between the drugs and Bascom?”

  “Julo Nafui knows the answer to that. So does Samantha Nunez. I also told Edward to get Sylvester Bascom’s bank records for the last six months. That might tell us something.”

  “Why don’t you ask him to meet us at a bar?”

  “All right,” I said. “Just do me a favor and try to stay reasonably sober.”

  “Sometimes I do my best work with a buzz,” he said, winking.

  It was one of his lines I would remember.

  ******

  We took a table at a neighborhood lounge off 50, and I called Edward.

  “Julo Nafui,” I said, spelling it for him. “Like I said yesterday, he’s Salvador Tuma’s henchman. He works at Pistol Pete’s, or at least has access to the back rooms.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Edward said.

  “My job.”

  “Oh, right, I meant—anyway, I’ve got Sylvester’s bank records, if you’re still interested.”

  “I am. We’re at this dive…hold on. Hey, man,” I yelled at the kid tending bar, “what’s the name of this joint?”

  “The Chatter Box,” he said.

  “Why don’t I meet you there at eight?” Edward said.

  After we hung up, I turned to Cody. “I’m gonna try something.” I dialed the number Iverson left for me.

  “Afternoon, Detective,” I said. “Have you arrested Julo Nafui yet?”

  “Who?”

  “Salvador Tuma’s henchman. The one who murdered Sylvester Bascom and probably also Sven Osterlund.”

  “I see,” Iverson said.

  “Quit wasting time, Iverson. Arrest Julo Nafui. He’s the one who stabbed Sylvester Bascom to death.”

  “Where’d you find this out?”

  “It doesn’t matter. He also almost killed my friend and me. Put out an APB on him.”

  “You don’t need to tell me how to do my job,” he said. “Hey, John Bascom called my boss and told your story of being dunked and left to freeze in the hills. By Conrad Pace!” He chuckled.

  “You find that farfetched? You were there when he abducted us.”

  “I was there when he arrested you. If Conrad Pace wanted you out of the picture, you’d be sitting in a cell right now, not walking the streets.”

  “Detective, I’m going to tell you something for your own personal protection. I’m not sure if you’re on the take or not, but even if you’re not, I don’t sense you’re going to play any role in taking down the bad guys, other than maybe filing some paperwork. So this is just information hopefully you can use to keep yourself out of trouble. Okay?”

  “Continue, please. I can’t wait to hear this.”

  “Conrad Pace is taking money from Tuma to allow him to deal drugs out of Placerville. Two deputies, Perdie and Fingsten, are relatives of Pace, and they’re part of the deal. So is your partner, Raneswich. Pace has a vested interest in protecting Tuma, and that includes Julo Nafui. Hopefully you can draw your own conclusions.”

  “My, my, don’t we have an active imagination,” he chortled.

  “Maybe I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, huh?”

  “Listen to me,” a different voice said.

  I felt a sudden violation at having an unexpected party on the line. My throat tightened, and I could feel the heat rise in my face.

  “Who is this?”

  “Shut up and listen to me. You come into my town and trample all over my turf, preventing this police department from conducting a proper investigation, and then you start spraying around these ludicrous accusations-”

  “How’s it going, Raneswich?”

  “I should have thrown you in jail last week. Obstruction o
f justice, breaking and entering, drunk in public, murder—you’re a prosecutor’s dream. I want you out of town. And not just South Lake Tahoe—that means Reno, Truckee, the whole damn region.”

  “You’re pissing in the wind,” I said. “Why don’t you go back to drinking from the toilet, or whatever it is you spend your working hours doing?”

  I heard Raneswich suck in his breath through his teeth.

  “I like your attitude. On second thought, hang around a while. It will make for a real nice day when I lock you up. I know some inmates down at Folsom who would love to meet you.”

  “Give it up, Raneswich. I know you’re sucking off Conrad Pace and Salvador Tuma for chump change. You think they’ll give a shit when you’re indicted along with them?”

  “I find it incredible a person like you is on the streets in this city. But that’ll be a temporary situation,” he said, and the line went dead.

  “Don’t you hate it when they get in the last word?” Cody said, as I set my phone down.

  “The Tahoe PD has no interest in Nafui,” I said.

  He raised his beer mug to me. “At least you don’t have to compete with them for the bounty.” He had a point, but at that moment the money was the last thing on my mind. The exchange with Raneswich had confirmed that the morally insane were running the show, and both the criminals and the dirty cops would stop at nothing to preserve their cozy little arrangement. I was both angry and disheartened, and felt a strong urge to just leave the cesspool to those who inhabited it.

  “You know why we’re still here?” Cody said, his eyes boring into mine. “Packing this new iron, wearing these vests, hanging around town? You know why? It’s because those guys caught us with our dicks out and our pants around our ankles, and it was easy. We barely put up a fight, and they took us out to that river and had a good laugh while we nearly drown and froze to death. They treated us like a couple of amateurs.”

  Cody took a long hit off his beer. “And neither of us wants to leave until that score is settled. We’re gonna find those assholes, or, if they find us first, we’ll be ready. Then we’ll settle the fucking score.”

  I looked at Cody. Even though his words sounded like boozy, macho, bar-rail boasting, I couldn’t argue his conclusion. But my reasoning was a little different. Yes, the criminals and corrupt cops had to be put out of commission. They all needed to go down, because any one of them might gladly kill us, given the opportunity. And that included the whole band: Nafui, Pace, Louis Perdie, and the dipshit cop Fingsten. And Raneswich, and maybe Iverson too, if he got in the way.

  When I went out to the back patio to have a smoke, the skies had turned dark. Gray and white clouds were moving slowly over the lake with the wind, from the west. It looked like another goddamned storm.

  While we waited for Edward, I took a seat at a cocktail table in the back of the place and called the number for the Sacramento Bee. I spent an hour on the phone with a journalist, giving him a detailed account of what had happened during the last three days. I gave him names, dates, everything I could think of. He said there had been vague rumors of corruption in Silverado County for months, but no one ever got a handle on it. “This is big,” he said.

  “How’d it go?” Cody asked when I came back to the bar.

  “I think I just poured a shitload of grief into Conrad Pace’s life. We’ll see how he and his buddies deal with that.”

  We had dinner and watched TV, drinking slow beers, staying away from the hard stuff. By the time Edward showed up, I had switched to coffee.

  “You look comfortable,” I said. Edward was wearing jeans, boots, and a t-shirt. It was the first time I’d seen him wear anything but his business clothes. “Are those the bank records?”

  “Yes.” He handed me the thick folder. “Give me a margarita on the rocks with a shot of Herradura on the side,” Edward told the bartender. Cody raised his eyes and nodded in approval.

  The copies of Sylvester Bascom’s canceled checks from the last six months covered thirty pages. I flipped through the sheets, looking for large amounts, scanning the payees for Osterlund or Tuma. Out of the dozens of checks, accounting for over $40,000 of expenditures, not one looked like it may have been used to buy or otherwise finance drugs.

  “Well, Edward,” I said finally. “You ready to head out to the cathouse?”

  “Sure, just for the experience—I mean, just to see what’s going on.”

  “Hey, whatever you do is your own business,” I said.

  “Yeah, monkey business,” Cody said, his bulletproof vest tight and bulky across his torso.

  We piled into Edward’s Crown Victoria and eased our way through the traffic lights on 50, rolling slowly past the casinos, heading out of town. A blanket of whiteness covered the dirt and grit of the city, and snowflakes drifted lazily from the heavy sky. It seemed unusually quiet for Stateline, as if the town was muted by the weight of the snow.

  Once the road turned east the forest thinned out, and was gradually replaced by the lonely landscape of the desert. We climbed over Spooner Summit, the Ford’s big motor pulling us up the grade. The pass was nearly deserted.

  “Edward, I called Iverson and told him it’s Julo Nafui he’s looking for,” I said.

  “What is it with Raneswich and Iverson?” Edward glanced at me as he drove. “Are you sure they’re in league with these bad cops? Or maybe they’re just really incompetent? It doesn’t seem like they ever made much progress on the murder.”

  “That was by design,” I said.

  “What do you think, Cody?” Edward said. Cody was sitting in the back, leaning against the door with his legs stretched out across the seat.

  “They’re getting paid off. But their free ride is coming to an end.”

  As we came off the mountain and glided onto the desert floor outside of Carson City, a jackrabbit darted in front of the car so quickly that Edward didn’t have time to react. We ran straight over it.

  “Jesus!” he exclaimed.

  “Lookit that,” Cody said, his head turned to the back window. “Lucky bunny made it. Probably just singed his ears on the oil pan.”

  I wondered if it was an omen.

  ******

  The Tumbleweeds Ranch was doing what I assumed was brisk business for a Monday night. We sat at the bar, watching the action. The girls rotated steadily in and out of the parlor, and every few minutes new ones appeared. Edward’s head turned like it was on a swivel. He kept tapping his fingers on the bar, and finally I said to him, “Hey, man, why don’t you pick one you like?”

  “Huh? No, no, that’s not why I’m here, you know that. I’m just looking.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Maybe you should just buy a souvenir cap,” Cody said, pointing at the caps, shirts, and assorted promotional items behind the bar.

  “Well,” Edward said a minute later, “if I was to partake, who do you think I should pick?”

  “What, I’m the expert?” I said.

  “Hey, go tear off a piece if you want. They won’t bite,” Cody said.

  Edward tried to smile his way through it, but his face was turning red.

  “You’re man enough, ain’t you?” Cody said.

  “Take it easy, Cody,” I said.

  Eventually a bleached blonde with cantaloupe-sized breasts sat next to Edward, and after a while she led him down a hallway.

  While he was gone, I spotted the Asian prostitute who had told me where to find Samantha Nunez. I doubted she would recognize me, but she caught me looking at her and sauntered over.

  “My favorite position’s doggie style,” she said, flashing her million-dollar smile.

  “Woof, woof,” Cody said between sips off his beer.

  “Hey, you. I remember you.” She slapped me lightly on the arm with the backs of her fingers. “Did you ever find Samantha?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Yeah, she didn’t stay in Vegas for long. You didn’t get to tell her about her sick family member, huh?”r />
  “Never had the chance.”

  “You still looking for her?”

  “Why?”

  “She called me the other day, said she can’t reach her boyfriend. Is he the one who’s sick?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Unfortunately he didn’t make it.”

  “He died?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh, my god, Samantha doesn’t know.” She put her finger on her chin and looked down and then looked back at me. “What did he die of?”

  I thought of Michael Dean Stiles, lying with his legs in the Truckee River, his beard glistening with vomit, his face bloodless, his last breath leaving his body. What did he die of? Greed probably, and certainly foolishness. A career criminal, a drug dealer and a killer, dying like a fool on a winter night in a cold desert canyon. I had a bizarre notion that if I went back there, I would find his clothed skeleton, grinning at me as if he’d had the last laugh.

  “Tell Samantha to leave me a message at this number if she wants to know.” I scribbled my office number on a cocktail napkin, then excused myself and went to the head. When I returned she was gone, but Edward was back at the bar with an ear-to-ear grin.

  “You didn’t fall in love, did you?” I asked.

  “Other way around,” he said, laughing, punching me on the shoulder.

  “Way to go, Casanova.” Cody reached out and mussed Edward’s hair.

  I bought the boys a round, and we toasted the good times, fun and laughter that could be had for the price of a few drinks, and free love, or at least love that didn’t cost any more than money.

  ******

  We left around midnight. The gravel crunched under our boots as we walked to Edward’s Ford. I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, and in that dark instant my mind flickered with a vision of my father’s death. Then a man holding a shotgun burst from behind the truck parked next to us. When I recognized the identity of the man, the synapses in my brain exploded with alarm. It was Julo Nafui.

  He pounced like a cat, his shotgun aimed at Cody. He wasn’t more than two feet away when he pulled the trigger. I could see the mucus in the corners of his eyes when the gun went off, the blast erupting into the still night like an angry curse. Cody had been standing next to me, and the next instant he was gone, his body flying back over the hood of Edward’s Ford as if he’d been hit by a bus.