Stateline (35 page)

“I called her, and her number’s disconnected.”

“Really? Dude, she’s probably on the run. I guess that would explain why there’s been no word on a funeral for Sven.”

No funeral. No matter how morally void your life, everyone deserved a funeral. On the other hand, it was hard to imagine anyone grieving for Osterlund. Maybe his mom thought it would be a waste of money.

“Why are you trying to reach her?” he asked.

“I’m finishing up my investigation of Bascom’s murder and wanted to see if she’d taken possession of her son’s belongings.”

“Dude, who knows? I think she’s history. You know what else I think? Sven was probably involved in his mom’s scam. He was probably trying to figure out a way to rip off Sylvester.”

“Yeah, could be. But still, the question is, why would a well-to-do guy like Sylvester Bascom be hanging around a fuck-up like Osterlund?”

Whitey didn’t know, and I resigned myself to the fact that maybe I would never find out what was behind it.

My finger was poised to dial Cody’s number, but the phone rang first. I was caught off guard when I heard the voice. It was Marcus Grier.

“I have some news I think will be of interest to you, Mr. Reno,” he said, his tone deep enough to rattle a coffee cup off a table. “Both the Sacramento and Reno papers printed front-page stories on the corruption of Conrad Pace’s office. I was interviewed by reporters from both papers. Read the articles—I think they’re just the tip of the iceberg.”

“That’s great news, Sheriff.”

“You are correct,” he said. “I’ve been rehired.”

“I’m glad to hear that. You think Pace will be indicted soon?”

“We’ll see. It’ll get real interesting in the next couple days.”

“Is Pace still in town?” I asked.

“As far as I know. He hasn’t formally resigned, but he’s laying low.”

“He’s got balls, I’ll give him that,” I said. “Marcus, have Sven Osterlund’s next of kin claimed his belongings yet?”

“Funny you should ask. A repo company picked up his truck yesterday. The rest of his stuff is being held by South Lake Tahoe PD. No one from his family has contacted me.”

“I heard he owned a fancy video camera. Did you happen to find that?”

“A video camera? No, there was no camera.”

After we hung up, I dialed Cody, thinking he wouldn’t answer because he was probably back to work at San Jose PD. But he answered the phone, his voice gruff and a little uneven.

“Dirty Double-Crossin’?”

“Hey, Cody.”

“Good to hear from you, Dirt,” he said. “I appreciate you calling, seeing how you’re responsible for breaking up my marriage.”

“What?”

“When I got home, Debbie gave me the news. She wants out. She even had the fucking papers prepared. Handed them to me right when I walked in the door.”

“Shit, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Don’t be—it wasn’t much of a surprise. But, being that I was saving your ass at the time she was probably in the sack with her attorney, I think the least you could do is buy your old buddy a meal and a couple drinks.”

“Sure,” I said. “How about Original Joe’s at six?”

“How about we hit their lounge right now?” It was half past three.

“You’re not working?”

“That’s another thing I’ll tell you about,” he said. “How does the old saying go? When it rains, it pours?”

“Give me an hour,” I said. “I need to pick up a couple newspapers.”

It didn’t take me long to end my two-week sobriety after meeting Cody at the restaurant. Once he started telling his stories, I wasn’t about to let him drink alone. Besides his divorce, the internal affairs division at SJPD was intent on making an example of him, and he was on unpaid leave, which was the final stop before termination. After a few drinks and some less than stellar Italian food, I tried to steer the conversation to a subject I hoped would cheer him.

“Check this out,” I said. I pulled the Reno and Sacramento newspapers out and set them on the bar. The headline of the
Sacramento Bee
read “Placerville Sheriff’s Mansion Bought With Drug Money.” There was a full-color picture of Conrad Pace, his cowboy hat crooked on his head, his face still bruised, trying to fight his way through a group of people with cameras and microphones. The article was long; it took up two columns above the fold and continued for two more pages in the middle of the paper. The reporter I’d talked to in Tahoe had tailed Pace and taken pictures of him in front of Jake Tuma’s house. The story claimed the house had a meth lab in the garage and was a highly frequented drug-dealing hub. The journalist had parked down the street from the house for a twelve-hour period and reported twenty-three cars stopping for short periods of time. Next to a picture of Pace in Tuma’s driveway was one of him at his fancy home in Granite Bay, the most expensive community between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.

The Reno paper’s story had a slightly different bend. Their front page was dominated by a large headline that blared: “Pistol Pete’s Linked to Corrupt Sheriff.” It focused on Pace’s relationship with Salvador Tuma, and they had pieced together a financial trail showing large cash transactions by Pace. The story elaborated on Tuma’s family ties to organized crime and discussed Jake Tuma’s drug ring, as well as mentioning Julo Nafui, claiming he had been a hired enforcer for the Tumas. It said Nafui was recently shot to death while attempting to murder enemies of Tuma.

The newspaper articles gave me a sense of satisfaction, but it wasn’t until later that evening, as Cody and I were leaving the restaurant, that it finally occurred to me—if Osterlund hadn’t destroyed and thrown away the camera and tape, there was one person who might have it.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled up in front of Mandy’s apartment complex in south San Jose. Once I told Cody my theory, he insisted we resolve it immediately. The light was on at Mandy’s unit. I knocked and heard muted noises.

“Go away,” a female voice said through the door.

“Open up, Mandy,” I said.

The door opened the few inches the security chain allowed. A black man’s face looked out at us. “Get lost, motherfuckers,” he said.

Wrong answer.

Cody brushed past me and body-slammed the door open. The chain popped as if it were dry macaroni. The black man was shirtless, his arms covered with designer tattoos. He looked like he might be a cornerback for the local college team. He took a karate stance, but Cody simply barreled him over. They tumbled into the kitchenette, the man’s head bounced hard off a tile counter, and then he lay still on the linoleum. “Next time don’t cuss at me,
motherfucker
,” Cody said.

Mandy watched impassively. Her low-cut blouse was slipping off her shoulder and her bra lay on the floor. The CD case on the coffee table was smeared with cocaine.

“Sorry to disturb your evening,” I said. “I’ll make it quick.”

“Looks like you’ll be spending the night in jail,” she said, and picked up her telephone.

I reached down and yanked the cord from the wall. “Osterlund’s video camera. Where is it?”

“What are you talking about? Are you high?”

“Here’s how it works, Mandy. I tie your hands behind your back and duct tape your mouth, while Cody and I wreck your place looking for it. Or you do it the easy way and hand it over.”

Her eyes blazed at me. “Gee, Dan, I guess it doesn’t matter to you that you’re breaking the law right now. Go ahead—tie me up, trash my place. And when you leave, you can look forward to being arrested. How’s that?”

“The camera is evidence in a murder investigation, Mandy. The fact you have it means you’re withholding evidence. That’s mandatory jail time.”

“You better just leave.”

“Not yet,” Cody’s voice came from the kitchen. “I’m making myself a sandwich. Where the hell’s the mayo?”

A groan followed Cody’s voice. “Don’t worry about this guy,” Cody said. “I’ll keep him occupied.”

Mandy sat down on the couch and began chopping herself a line on the CD case.

“So if I get you the camera, what happens then?”

“Then you’re free and clear.”

“As if it never happened?”

“As if what never happened?”

“Well, whatever’s on the tape.”

“Hand it over and you got nothing to worry about.”

She held her hair behind her ear and snorted a rail. Then she leaned back and studied me with glassy eyes. After a moment she shrugged and walked down the hall. When she came back, she held a black camera.

“The tape’s still in it,” she said.

“What was Osterlund’s deal, Mandy? Why was Sylvester hanging out with him?”

“They were both hardcore voyeurs,” she said, chopping another line. “Sylvester could barely get it up unless he was watching somebody fuck, or unless he knew somebody was watching him. Sven was the same way, but not quite as bad.”

“And Osterlund’s angle? Blackmail?”

“Pretty obvious, isn’t it? He was going to make Sylvester pay him off, or he’d show the tape of Sylvester making it with a couple of whores to Desiree. It was my idea, but I never thought Sven would go through with it, the crazy son of a bitch.”

Cody walked out of the kitchen with a submarine sandwich in his paw. “Got what you need, Dirt?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Sylvester was a perverted weirdo, Dan,” Mandy said. “Desiree told me he set up a camera and videoed them every time they got it on.”

“Did you watch this tape?” I said, holding up the camera.

“No, I–”

“Good. Forget it ever existed.”

“Consider it done,” she said.

“Hey,” Cody said. “Sorry about your door, and raiding your fridge. I could come back and fix it and maybe take you out to lunch.”

“How sweet of you,” Mandy said.

As we left, Mandy’s date struggled woozily to his feet. “Hey, asshole,” he said and started toward Cody. Some guys have a steep learning curve. Cody backhanded him across the jaw with his fist and knocked him out cold again.

“You ought to pick smarter boyfriends,” I said to Mandy, but she’d gone back to the couch to take another snort off the CD case. She didn’t look up when we walked out.

“Christ, Dirt, get a load of the rack on Mandy,” Cody said once we were in my truck. “She looks like she’d be one hell of a good time. You got her number?”

“My advice would be to stay away from her,” I said. “She eats guys like you and me for lunch.”

Cody laughed as if I were kidding.

O
ver the next few days, the Federal Anti-Corruption Task Force, the FBI, and then the IRS all flocked to South Lake Tahoe, turning the city into a media circus. Jake Tuma was arrested, and his house was sealed off while the cops went through it. They charged him with twenty-six separate drug-related offenses. The DA’s office, armed with a mountain of evidence and amid major public pressure, brought the case to trial promptly and convicted him of most of the charges. The drug-crazed bully who pushed women around when he didn’t get his way was sentenced to thirty years in prison. I saw him on TV the day he was sentenced. He stared the camera down, his face furious and bitter, then spat at the lens. He was quoted as saying he had a powerful family and intended to be free on appeal shortly.

The Nevada Gaming Commission sent a team of accountants to scour the books at Pistol Pete’s. I heard later that Salvador Tuma left unexpectedly in the night and was rumored to have fled the country. I wondered if Jake thought about his father as he sat on a lumpy, thin mattress, smelling the open toilet in his cell, or when he showered next to men who were fully capable of punching a homemade shank through his liver for any perceived slight.

Marcus Grier had been granted full back-pay for the work he had missed and was now running his department without impediment from Conrad Pace, who was still county sheriff, but had stopped coming into his office. Shortly after Grier was rehired, Detective Iverson found Raneswich comatose in his apartment, after an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. Raneswich recovered, and he and Iverson both quit the force and vanished. Louis Perdie, Ronald Fingsten, and Conrad Pace all tried to leave town shortly afterward. The Nevada Highway Patrol caught up with Perdie and Fingsten outside of Eli, Nevada. But Conrad Pace was a mystery, for the time being. Somehow, he had slipped through the cracks.

I called Edward Cutlip at Bascom Headquarters and was pleased to find out John Bascom had promoted him to VP of operations, the position Sylvester would have had.

“You know, it was weird,” Edward said. “After you and Cody brought me into the suite in the wheelchair and told Bascom what happened at the cathouse, he started treating me differently. It was like I was a different person.”

“Maybe he appreciates you risked your life for his cause.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

• • •

The district attorney from South Lake Tahoe contacted Cody and me in early April and said we would be called to testify in the trials of Louis Perdie and Ronald Fingsten. The charges ranged from kidnapping to drug and corruption offenses. We spent six nights at the Lakeside on the city’s tab, sitting in court during the day and keeping our nighttime activities to a low roar. The court sessions were tedious, but left me with a couple of enduring images. One was of Louis Perdie in a dark blue suit and yellow necktie. He looked completely different from the violent hillbilly deputy I had known. But when we locked eyes, he gave me the same irreverent, cockeyed smile, as if he were back at the Lakeside’s diner, wiping scrambled eggs from the corner of his mouth. The other image was of Deputy Fingsten on the stand, so nervous and scared I could see him shaking, as if he couldn’t believe he’d be held responsible for his actions.

On the same day both men were convicted on a series of capital offenses, an abrupt news bulletin interrupted the proceedings: Conrad Pace had been found.

Two peckerwood fishermen stumbled upon his corpse in a shack built on stilts out in the deep bayou in southern Louisiana. They had stopped there when the motor on their skiff gave out. As they climbed the decaying ladder, they knew from the smell something was dead in the old wood slat structure. They thought it was probably an alligator that had been skinned and left behind. But when they walked through the humid air into the ramshackle, creaky room, they found the rapidly decomposing body of Conrad Pace. He was tied upright in a metal chair, his ankles fastened to the chair legs, his arms pinned behind him, his chest and shoulders tightly bound with bailing wire. The wire was buried deep in his flesh, as if his skin had grown around it. His mouth was sealed with duct tape, and two dime-sized holes were in the center of his forehead, like a second set of eyes.