Stateline Page 2

  “Hey, you don’t have to. I’ll pay you.” He pulled his soggy wallet from his back pocket.

  “Naw, that’s all right,” I said. I finished his first tire quickly and was moving the tarp to the other side of the car when a white Chevy four-by-four truck came roaring around the bend, its oversize, off-road tires spitting chunks of ice and gravel. The driver set the truck up in a four-wheel drift and came within six feet of where we stood, spraying slush and dirt all over both of us and our cars. A dude with dirty blond hair stuck his head out the passenger window. “Get a four-by-four, losers!” he yelled, and backhanded a partially full Coors can in our direction. It skipped off the hood of the station wagon and skidded through the scree and into the pine trees. I wiped my face and stared, hoping to get a license plate number, but my view was cut off by the chubby man sprinting after the truck.

  “Lousy punks!” he screamed, hurling a handful of slush in their direction.

  ******

  By the time I cleared Echo Summit and dropped into Tahoe Valley, it was dark. My visions of early happy hour had turned into a soggy two-hour drive over the pass at twenty-five miles an hour. I took the chains off and drove down Highway 50, South Lake Tahoe’s main drag. Most of the businesses had left their Christmas lights on for the winter, and the colorful patterns reflected off the deep banks of snow lining the roadway. The brightly lit casino hotels loomed ahead at the Nevada border, dominating the skyline and overlooking the splendor of the lake. I’d spent plenty of long nights in those casinos, throwing away money and slurping free casino drinks.

  Nora Bascom had arranged for a block of rooms to be reserved for the wedding guests at the Lakeside Inn, which was a step up from the cheap hotels I was used to. I walked into the lobby and smiled. The hotel was on the Nevada side of the border, in the city of Stateline, Nevada. You always knew you were in Nevada when you smelled the cigarette smoke and heard the clanging of slot machines. It was like walking into a different world, or like stepping back in time, to a place where bars never closed, gambling and prostitution were respected industries, and drunk driving was still treated as a minor offense.

  ******

  I chucked my bag on the bed and unpacked, hanging my sports coat and slacks. The wedding would be a swank affair, and I wanted to look presentable in front of my ex and her family, most of who would be there.

  Although Julia and I were on friendly terms now, our divorce five years ago had been ugly. Julia had accused me of being a drunken loser, and despite what I thought was a reasonable excuse for my drinking, she was uncompromising. I’d been hitting the bottle hard during a depressing investigation involving a child pornography ring, and in the end I learned the hard way that women generally do not find excessive drinking an endearing trait.

  The porno case culminated when the ringleader, a pedophile named Elrod Bradley, tried to slit my throat in the parking lot of the Y-Not Lounge in San Jose. I had left the bar after last call and was walking out to my car when Bradley emerged from the shadows behind me and got his arm around my neck. After a brief struggle, I managed to pull my Beretta .40-caliber pistol and stick it against his ribs. He had me in a chokehold from behind and was trying to crank my head back to cut my jugular with the stiletto knife in his left hand. Once I had my gun out, I gave him one warning, told him to drop the knife, then I felt a stinging pain as the blade nicked my ear, and I jerked the trigger. The hollow-point bullet entered the side of his ribcage and blew a fist-sized chunk of his spine and guts into the open window of a blue Corvette that belonged to the late-shift bartender at the Y-Not.

  My recollection of what happened after that is disjointed. I remember holding my ear as Elrod Bradley gurgled his last bloody breaths into the broken glass and dirty gravel coating the parking lot. The blood dripped steadily from the deep slice in my ear, running through my fingers and soaking my sleeve. The bartender and three or four of the local drunks came out after they heard the gunshot, and a minute later the San Jose PD showed up, their sirens wailing, their lights turning the night into a carnival. A detective led me aside and started questioning me, but I had a damp bar towel clutched to the side of my head and didn’t hear much of what he said. Eventually a uniformed cop took me by the arm. I stood under the kaleidoscope of blue and red lights while he cuffed me, drunk and disoriented and wondering what the next chapter of my life held in store.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was past six o’clock, and when I looked out the hotel window toward Lake Tahoe, the snow was falling steadily against the dark silhouettes of the pines. I showered and put on dry clothes, resisting the urge to first go downstairs for a drink. I had spent three years dead sober before I started working for Wenger, but I fell off the wagon the day he hired me, somehow already knowing I would need to drink to tolerate him. This time though, I had figured, I’d manage my drinking with the maturity befitting a man who had survived himself into his thirties. That’s what I kept on telling myself.

  The alarm on the clock radio must have gone off while I was in the shower—country-western music blared through the cheap speaker. I switched it off when I saw the message light blinking on the phone. I stared at it for a minute, hoping it wasn’t Wenger. It would be like him to leave a message on my hotel room phone instead of just calling my cell. It was Wenger’s way of trying to be unorthodox or unpredictable. I never quite understood his motivations in this regard. His voice came over the phone, and I frowned, as if battling a persistent case of diarrhea.

  I listened to Wenger prattle on about a few spelling mistakes in my report, his need for me to arrange a second meeting with Lem Tuggle, and his expectation that I’d be in the office early on Monday. He was still talking when he exceeded the time limit and was cut off. I made a mental note to not tell Wenger where I was staying in the future, and deleted the message.

  Through my window I could see the snow was now falling in a thick curtain. I stared, mesmerized by the random patterns of the snowflakes. If the storm let up by Sunday morning, there would be epic skiing conditions at South Lake Tahoe’s massive resort. I ran my fingers down the edges of my skis, which I had propped up in a corner of the room. A good day on the slopes might be just the thing to put me in a positive mood come Monday morning.

  ******

  It wasn’t until I pulled into the Midnight Tavern and began futilely searching for a parking spot that I remembered the rehearsal dinner. Sylvester Bascom and Desiree McGee’s dinner was being held that night at the adjoining Mountainside Mine restaurant. The parking lot was crammed full with the cars of the two hundred guests attending the event. I found a spot down the street and hiked through the snowfall back to the bar.

  As I was passing the restaurant, I noticed a white Chevy truck parked in a handicapped spot. It was maxed out with off-road gear, including a lift kit that made it sit high above its thirty-eight-inch mud tires. The front grill, headlight guards, and steel step bars were polished chrome, as was the six-point roll cage mounted behind the extended cab. I looked through the windshield and saw a handicap permit hanging from the rearview mirror.

  The permit looked bogus; the color seemed wrong. I walked around to the tailgate and checked out the license. The customized California plate under the steel bumper said “PSYCHIC.” It looked suspiciously like the truck that rooster-tailed me with road snow earlier in the day, and I had a hard time believing the driver of this vehicle had handicapped parking privileges.

  I climbed the four wooden stairs to the main entrance and pushed through the bar’s heavy saloon-style doors. The restaurant was to the right, and was well known for its expensive menu and celebrity clientele. The Midnight Tavern, on the other hand, was targeted at less-discerning customers. It was popular with the local crowd, which, in Lake Tahoe, meant hard-partying snowboarders, timeshare salespeople, blackjack dealers, and miscellaneous loadies. But it also attracted its fair share of tourists looking for a real drink, hot pub food, and a break from the casinos.

  The bar was about forty feet long
, and the floor was made up of what looked to be ancient wood planks, but they felt solid and didn’t bow when I walked across the room. I took a seat on the far side of the bar, near a wood-burning stove. There were about a dozen cocktail tables on the floor, set up to view a small, raised stage with a drum set and a pair of guitar amps. Three old-fashioned Western-style chandeliers hung from heavy beams that sectioned the ceiling.

  About half the seats in the bar were full, mostly on one side where a group of locals were laughing and talking loudly. The bartender, a brown-haired girl with tight jeans and a white half shirt, finished pouring them a round and walked over to me.

  “Do you still have beef stew on the menu?” I asked.

  “Sure do,” she said, pointing it out on the menu with a purple designer fingernail. She smiled, showing teeth that were a little too small for her mouth. But that didn’t distract me—she had smooth skin, long, shiny hair, and her outfit was the type that suggested she was proud of what she looked like when she took it off. The type of woman that made for good, idle, bar fantasies.

  A worker threw some split wood in the stove. I relaxed in the heat of the fire and watched the joint begin to grow more crowded. I ordered a beer and a shot of Canadian Club when the bartender brought out my dinner, and then a couple of men pulled up seats next to me. One of them, a blond dude with a three-inch billy-goat beard, said, “I’d like a Beam on the rocks, and get my date here a Shirley Temple.”

  “No, no, a double Jack and Coke!” the other guy exclaimed, while his buddy grinned. I tried to mind my own business, but the blond guy leaned forward and said to me, “Don’t worry about my friend here. He’s gay, but I’ve trained him to keep his hands to himself.” I laughed, and the poor guy who was the butt of the joke looked over at me, sputtering, searching for a remark to save face. Then his eyes widened, and he said, “Dan!”

  “Brad-o-Boy?” I had to look at him for a moment before I was sure. It was Brad Turner, my old next-door neighbor from San Jose.

  “What the hell, buddy?” Brad said, standing and embracing me in an awkward hug.

  “Good to see you, Brad,” I said. “It’s been too long.”

  Brad sat down and ran his hand through his thick mane of dark hair. He was about six years younger than me, and when we were kids I felt like I was the older brother he never had, which was unseemly considering the relationship I had at one point with his sister. Ahh, fun-loving Lana Turner. My teenage first.

  “Is that you, Whitey?” I said, looking around Brad at the other man.

  “You’re goddamn right it is,” Brad said. “You’re looking at The Cheeseball himself.”

  Derrick Whitehouse and Brad had been best friends since elementary school. Brad had referred to him as The Cheeseball for as long as I could remember. Whitey was a gregarious, round-headed guy with an ample beer gut. I remembered he used to drink imported beer and smoke pot profusely. Looking at him, I got the impression not much had changed.

  I shook hands with Whitey. “How have you been, man?” I said.

  “Dude, I am insane,” he replied.

  “What you been up to, Dan?” Brad said, clubbing me on the shoulder with his open hand, looking at me with watery eyes. His complexion was ruddy, he needed a shave, and he smelled like cigarette smoke. It had been some years since I’d seen Brad, and he didn’t look like the innocent, happy-go-lucky kid I remembered. I’d heard he’d been in and out of rehab a few times, had gone through a court-mandated twelve-step program, and had a failed marriage with a couple of kids behind him.

  “Same stuff, Brado, just workin’.”

  “You know, I was in the Y-Not a couple weeks ago, and they still got a chunk of that guy’s spine on the shelf.”

  “What?” I said, my fork hovering in front of my mouth.

  “It’s in a jar of vodka behind the bar. And you know what? They put up a sign next to it that says ‘No Preverts.’” Brad started laughing and took a long swig from his drink. “Fuckin’ classic,” he said.

  “His spine?”

  “You knew about that, right? When you shot him, it blew one of his vertebras into the Corvette the bartender used to drive. Right? So the bartender cleaned it up and put it behind the bar.”

  I’d never been back to the Y-Not Lounge after the night of the shooting. It had been more than five years. I threw back my shot of whiskey. That night had caused me a heap of grief.

  “Well, I guess that is classic,” I said.

  “Damn right it is. So, you just up here on a ski vacation?”

  “Yeah, but I’m going to a wedding tomorrow.”

  “No shit? At Caesar’s?” Brad looked at me in surprise.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Because that’s why I’m here, buddy! Osterlund’s in the wedding.” Brad smiled and sucked on his drink.

  “Sven Osterlund?”

  “Yeah. He’s in there at the rehearsal dinner.” Brad pointed toward the hallway that led to the fancy restaurant. “As soon as it’s over we’re heading back to Caesar’s for the bachelor party.”

  “You’re still buddies with Osterlund, huh?” I said. Sven Osterlund had gone to the same high school as I did, but was a few years younger. He and Brad had become friends sometime after I left home, and I had never met him, but I’d seen him on TV doing commercials with his mother, Zelda Thomas, a popular psychic in San Jose. Osterlund always had his shirt off in the commercials, for no reason other than to show off his steroid-enhanced physique. Brad had told me stories of wild parties in hotel rooms with unlimited cocaine and expensive strippers, all funded by Osterlund. According to Brad, Whitey had pissed off Osterlund at one of those parties by suggesting that Osterlund didn’t really work but was supported fully by his mother. Osterlund gave Whitey the option to fight him or jump from the hotel room’s second-story balcony. Whitey jumped, and nearly bit his tongue off when his knee slammed into his chin on impact.

  “Osterlund’s all right,” Brad said. “He’s not a bad guy-”

  “For a douchebag,” Whitey interjected.

  “Anyway, he offered to drive us up here, and he’s got a righteous new truck,” Brad continued. “It’s a totally maxed out, brand-new Chevy four-by-four. Cost fifty grand.”

  “Must be some truck,” I said.

  “Dan, why don’t you stop by the bachelor party? I’m sure it’d be cool,” Whitey said. Then Brad leaned toward me. “If you need anything for the nose, let me know.”

  I looked at Brad, hoping he wasn’t dealing. He’d always had a compulsive personality, and was the type that would probably snort himself out of business in a hurry and maybe end up owing some serious people a lot of money.

  “You holding, Brado?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. But Osterlund is. He’s got a connection in Placerville, and he picked up a pack earlier today. Dan, this shit’s da kine. You ever have core?”

  “Core? Never heard of it.”

  “It’s like half coke and half crank with ecstasy mixed in. It’s the best junk I’ve ever had.”

  “I’m just going to take it easy tonight, Brad,” I said, and excused myself to go to the head.

  ******

  The door to the men’s room at the Midnight Tavern was locked, so I walked down the hallway to find the restaurant bathroom. A waiter balancing a large tray of desserts hurried by me, and I followed him down the hall to the entrance of the main dining area, where the rehearsal dinner was being held. I heard the tinkling of silverware against glass, and the din from the large gathering subsided. A man in a steel-gray business suit stood at a podium on the far side of the room. His head was bald and his taut features were offset by a neatly trimmed gray mustache beneath a hawk-shaped nose.

  I turned to continue down the hall, but when the man started speaking, I found his voice arresting. Despite feeling like an intruder, I stopped and listened.

  “I’d like to thank everyone for being here in Lake Tahoe for this momentous event, the wedding of my son, Sylvester, to De
siree.” The speaker was John Bascom. His voice came over the PA system with perfect clarity.

  “Many of you, both family members and my good friends, have traveled great distances to be here, and I especially appreciate that. This is a major event for me personally. Those of you who know me well know how strongly I feel about family. A strong marriage is the basis for a strong family, and behind every successful man stands a strong woman. I can attest to that.” He gestured toward a demure, sophisticated-looking woman sitting in the front, who stood and waved to a scattering of light laughter. “I’ve seen Sylvester develop over the last five years,” he continued, “since he graduated from college, into a fine business executive. I’d like to feel I taught him well, and I believe I have, but all the teaching in the world is meaningless unless the student has ability. And instincts.” He paused, leaned forward, and tapped his temple with his index finger.

  “Sylvester,” he said, “when you return from your honeymoon and walk into the offices of Bascom Lumber, you’ll do so as our new vice president of operations.”

  A number of people in the front stood and clapped, and eventually half the room rose to their feet. John Bascom stepped down from the podium and shook hands with his son, then picked up a glass of wine and returned to the microphone.

  “I’d like to propose a toast to the success, prosperity, and happiness of my son and his new wife, Desiree.” Everybody clapped again and drank.

  I found the restroom, but as I was walking out I nearly tripped over my ex-wife and her husband, Parkash Singh.

  “Watch where you’re going, you doofus!” Julia said, her eyes twinkling in amusement at having caught me off guard.

  “Oh, hi,” I said.

  “What are you doing here?” The freckles on her cheekbones danced under her brown eyes.

  “I was having dinner over in the bar.” I turned to her husband and stuck out my hand. “What’s happening, Parkash?” I said, feeling a grin spread across my face.

  “Very good of course, Dan,” he said. “And you are well?”

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  Julia had married Parkash Singh two years after we divorced, and despite occasional pangs of remorse over my failed marriage, I found it impossible not to like him. He came to America from India ten years ago and had established himself as a successful pediatrician. He seemed to be continually amazed and delighted with American culture, but after getting to know him, I saw through it. His naïve tourist persona was genuinely part of his charm, but Parkash was a shrewd, tough man. He had spent some difficult years in India, had seen two of his sisters disappear, and did three months in a squalid jail in Bombay when he complained too loudly. Despite his background, he was a naturally effervescent individual; he exuded good humor, laughter, and optimism.