Stateline (22 page)

“I got the records you asked for,” he said after I finished. “Edward Cutlip has nothing but a few traffic violations, and the same for Sylvester Bascom. But Sven Osterlund is a different story: shoplifting and a couple busts for assault and battery, two DUI arrests and one conviction, a cocaine possession that was dropped, and an indecent exposure for pissing on the street in front of a bar. He’s been represented by Lawrence Stein on his last couple arrests, and Stein’s made a fortune defending wealthy lowlifes. It looks likes Osterlund’s managed to avoid any serious jail time.”

“Tell Stein he won’t be representing Osterlund again, if you see him around the courthouse.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because dead men don’t pay their bills too well.”

“Osterlund’s dead?”

“Yeah. Somebody shot him and dumped him in Lake Tahoe.”

“Well, fuckin’-A. Hey, man, why don’t I meet you in Tahoe when you get back? It sounds like you might need some backup.” Then he lowered his voice. “I got to get out of here. Being home all the time is causing problems with my wife.”

“I don’t know if that would work. I’ve been busy as hell, Cody.”

“So? Come on, I’ll watch your back. Maybe I can help you, run license plates, you know? I got people who owe me favors at the precinct.”

It sounded like a bad idea. I wanted to keep a low profile, and Cody’s style was about as subtle as a buffalo stampede at a tea party.

“I don’t even know when I’ll be back in Tahoe,” I said, but I knew I didn’t sound convincing.

“How about if I call you Friday morning and drive up? You should be back by then, huh? Really, man, I got to split. Debbie and I had just patched things up, and now it’s going bad again. Our relationship is better when I’m not around so much. I’m serious.”

“Cody, I can’t afford a shit storm in Tahoe. I got too much at stake to let things get out of control.”

“What? What? Hey, you got my word I’ll be mellow. Just easy times and slow beers. You know me.”

“Yeah, I do know you. That’s what scares me. All right, give me a call Friday, and we’ll talk.”

“We’ll have a hell of a time, Dirt. Just like the old days!”

• • •

The wind was gusting when my flight took off, which made for a rough ride to Salt Lake. I sat in a row by myself in the half-full plane, watching the features of Las Vegas grow small and fall away. I reached into my pocket for Samantha’s address book and slowly went through the pages, trying to read life into the anonymous names and numbers. The book wasn’t very full. I counted sixteen female and nine male names, one of which could belong to Mr. 187. Toward the back, under X, Y and Z, were a number of sketches, mostly faces, of both men and women. They were well-drawn, and I studied them for a while, then put the book away and closed my eyes. But I found the faces strangely compelling, as if perhaps they told a story, and I took the book out and was still staring at the drawings when the plane touched down.

S
alt Lake City looked an ugly gray, as it always did in winter. The mountains that loomed over the city were snowcapped and foreboding and seemed to cast a pall over the uniformly dull and lifeless downtown buildings. Even the trees were bare and without color. You could film a movie here in black and white, and no one would know the difference.

I rented a Ford sedan and headed south. Once I’d been on the road for half an hour, the country opened up and the landscape turned green and picturesque. I turned off the interstate south of Nephi and drove a few miles down Highway 28 before pulling over at a small country market for a can of beer. A mountain range studded with fir and pine bordered the highway on the right, and a broad meadow lay to the left. A stream babbled faintly in the distance, and the wind made a rushing sound through the trees. The air felt cold and fresh on my face, in contrast to the smoggy grit of the city.

It was twilight when I rolled into Salina. The main drag of the small town was quiet, almost deserted, leaving the impression it was always silent and still here, as if the local population had long ago given up any hope of exuberance.

I spotted a state liquor store and picked up two pints of booze. A small hotel at the end of the street advertised color TV and cable. I checked in, and while the clerk did the paperwork, I read a thin brochure describing activities in Salina and the city’s history.

Salina, the Spanish word for “salt,” was named for the large salt deposits in the area. The primary recreation was fishing and hunting in the nearby Fishlake area, and the biggest employer was the coal mine thirty miles east of town in Salina Canyon. The town had been abandoned in 1872 because of Indian troubles, but was resettled in 1886, and today has a population of slightly over two thousand. It made for good reading to pass the time, but didn’t give me any hint where Beverly Howitt might be found.

I stayed in my room long enough to brush my teeth and drag a comb through my hair, then I drove around town for a few minutes until I found the address on Third Street where Beverly’s aunt lived. It was a small green home with a tar driveway and a shake roof so old it looked like a strong breeze would blow the shingles into the street. But the house was dark, the driveway empty, and no one answered when I knocked. I considered waiting in my car across the street, but I hadn’t had dinner, and the pint of whiskey on my passenger seat kept whispering my name. So I drove back to Main Street and found a bar toward the end of town in a crumbling stucco structure with an old Western-style wood plank façade.

When I went in, every eye in the place turned to me, like they hadn’t seen a new face for years. A couple of grizzled ranch hands sat at the battle-scared bar, drinking Coors bottles, their faces set with hard expressions and bleak eyes. Next to them was a middle-aged woman who looked like she might have been a schoolteacher or maybe worked at a general store. She wore her hair pinned up, and her dress had gone out of style decades ago. At the end of the bar, an old hippie wearing a green fatigue jacket and tattered blue jeans sat holding a bottle in a brown paper bag. He had long, dirty hair, a scraggly beard, and was smoking Pall Mall non-filters.

I took a seat on a rickety bar stool. The bar top was marred by hundreds of cigarette burns, and half of the lacquer had peeled off. In the back of the joint was a kitchen with a pass-through window cut out of the wall. The bartender was talking to someone; after a minute he took his foot off the sinks and came my way, flipping a coaster neatly in front of me.

“What you d-d-drinkin’, buddy?” he said.

“Seven-Up.” I pulled a pint of whiskey from my coat and set it on the bar, leaving it in the brown paper bag, as was the custom.

He served my drink and lit a smoke. “Where you from? We don’t g-g-get a lot of out-of-towners.” His eyes were green and wide, and he looked at me with frank interest, as he smoothed down his long Yosemite Sam mustache.

“Reno.”

“D-d-d-did you drive across the desert?” He pointed with his finger while he stuttered, as if the motion would help his enunciation. His eyes never left mine.

“No, I don’t trust my car. I took a plane.”

“G-g-good idea. You don’t want to break d-down in that frickin’ desert. You gonna eat? We got good food here.” He pushed a handwritten menu to me.

I ordered a burger and fries and sipped the stiff drink I’d made myself. Two young women came in and sat at a table. They seemed to be already drunk; one was swaying in her chair while the other poured clear liquor into her glass with an unsteady hand. The bartender came back from the kitchen, and I waved at him to come over.

“Another Seven?”

“Yeah, thanks. I’ve got a question for you, if you don’t mind.”

“Ask away, buddy.”

“Have you heard of a lady named Beverly Howitt?”

He broke into a smile. “Sure, I know her. She’s the b-b-best-looking woman to ever come out of this town.”

“No kidding? I’ve been trying to reach her. Any idea where she might be?”

“What for?”

“Something she wants to keep confidential, I think.”

He considered that, then said “Last I heard, she left town. Must have been a couple months ago.”

“How about her parents? Are they local?”

“Her mom is. She’s very sick,” he said, leaning forward. “Cancer, I believe. I think she’s at the hospital in Richfield.” The phone rang behind the bar and he picked it up.

“R-r, r-r,” he stammered, then took the phone from his ear and looked at it. “They frickin’ hung up.” He hiked himself up and sat on the back bar.

“Does she have a boyfriend in town?”

“Huh,” he laughed. “She used to be with Sam the Gum-Out Man. It was only b-b-because of his money. He’s twice her age, but now he’s singing the broken heart blues. He usually comes in a little later.”

I freshened my drink. “You want a taste?” I said, wiggling the whiskey bottle at him.

A half hour later, the pint was gone. The hippie had come over to bum a shot, and the bartender, whose name was Rasmussen, had a drink. I produced a bottle of vodka and poured a round. The dusk turned to night, and my purpose seemed to slip behind me. I tried not to get drunk, and after a while I returned the vodka to my car and started drinking straight soda. At around eight-thirty, a man with sandy hair and a bloated complexion walked in and ordered a drink. The bartender nudged me with his knuckle.

“There’s the g-g-g…the Gum-Out Man.”

“Who?”

“Sam the Gum-Out Man.”

The man sat alone at a table, a highball glass and brown-bagged bottle in front of him.

“Excuse me,” I said, walking up and pulling back a chair. “Do you mind?”

He looked up at me, a flicker of surprise passing through his bleary eyes. “Be my guest.”

He was a good-sized fellow, thick in the chest and gut, with a neck like a bull. But his shoulders hunched forward as if his head was an unbearable weight, and his face sagged deeply. He looked so melancholy and defeated I said, “You okay?”

He took a breath and sighed heavily. “It ain’t anything I haven’t been through before. You’d think a man my age would know better.”

“Woman problems?”

He nodded, looking at me sadly, looking for someone, anyone, who would listen. I was probably the only one in the joint who hadn’t heard his story.

“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.