Dying for the Highlife (13 page)

“Damn him,” Sheila said.

“He’s got onto 58 west now,” Cody said.

The map crinkled behind me. “But that leads nowhere!” Sheila said.

“It leads to 395. He’s heading to Tahoe.” I checked my gas gauge.

“Oh, right,” Sheila said. “But there’s not much along the way—a couple little towns, Red Mountain, Atolia…”

“Those are ghost towns—I don’t think anyone still lives there,” I said. “All right, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll make a quick stop in Barstow, fill the tank, then get back on the road. South Lake Tahoe is almost five hundred miles away. He’ll need gas again and probably food. There are more towns further north. Hopefully he’ll stop long enough for us to catch up.”

We took the exit for Barstow, and I filled the tank while Cody and Sheila headed into the mini-mart. When they came out, Cody had a twelve-pack of Budweiser tucked under his arm. “Might as well enjoy the ride,” he said, gesturing north toward the high desert.

And so we hit the road again, driving hard through the sparse terrain. Sheila put her headphones on and stretched out in the back seat. Cody and I cracked beers. I rolled down the window to check the midafternoon temperature and was greeted by a gritty blast of hot air. “Christ, it’s got to be a hundred and ten out there,” Cody said.

“Beats freezing to death, though,” I said.

“Your toes still feel it?”

“Sometimes.”

“We got those sons of bitches, Dirt. Every one of them.” Cody opened another beer and held it up. “Here’s to every asshole that gets what’s coming to him.”

An hour later, we shot past the exit for Ridgecrest, a town of about twenty thousand bordering a military weapons testing area. The mountains of the Sequoia National Forest became visible on our left. To the right the land stretched without interruption across the bleak landscape toward Death Valley.

“The son of a bitch is still gaining on us,” Cody said.

“Well, this is a perfect road to go for a speed run. I’d say he has a slight horsepower advantage.” I cranked the Ford up to eighty. “If we push it, this heap will overheat.”

We plodded along for another forty-five minutes, doing our best to make time, heading north along the eastern rim of California. The Sierra Nevada mountain range now flanked us, and I could see the peak of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the continental US, up ahead. We were driving along a section of 395 where the high desert butted up against alpine peaks created by eons of fault block activity, resulting in the southern Sierras.

“He’s stopped,” Cody said. “In Lone Pine.”

Sheila took off her headphones. “Where?”

“I never heard of it. Let’s just hope he stays there long enough for us to catch him.”

J
immy was still on a high from his whirlwind tour of Costa Rica. He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but the experience had been everything Larry promised. The women were wild and friendly, and the culture pulsated with a decadent Latin rhythm Jimmy found to his liking. And besides the party life, Larry arranged a deep-sea fishing expedition on a luxury yacht, and Jimmy caught the biggest fish of the day, a six-foot sailfish.

The previous night, before he flew back on the early flight in the morning, had been an all-timer. He’d brought half a dozen whores to his suite at the El Presidente, and one of them sold him an eight-ball of high-grade Colombian blow, fresh from the border. Jimmy cut lines on a large mirror he removed from the wall, they cranked the music up high, and the girls stripped except for their high heels. The hookers were trying to teach Jimmy and Larry to dance the samba, until finally the party dissolved into a raucous orgy, with couplings of every variety ensuing, girl on girl, two girls on one guy, even oral with no condoms, and on and on until Jimmy’s member was raw, and poor Larry lay passed out face down and bare-assed in the corner. Jimmy left him that way when he jumped into a limo at four-thirty in the morning and barely made his flight.

He slept in his first-class seat the entire trip and actually felt pretty good when he landed in Vegas. He took a cab straight from the airport to the Mirage, threw his suitcase into the tiny trunk in the Lamborghini’s front section, and drove away. He knew the ass-kissing manager at the Mirage was hoping he’d stay around and drop some more dough at the tables, but Jimmy had other ideas.

While the women in Costa Rica had been great, none could speak much English, so they couldn’t appreciate Jimmy’s wry sense of humor or insightful comments. Jimmy rubbed at his lips as he drove and felt a pang of panic when he remembered where his mouth had been. Oh well, even if he came down with a raging case of the cankers, his money could surely buy a remedy. Truthfully though, Jimmy thought he’d really reached the point where the constant whoring was no longer exciting. After years of not having a real relationship with a woman, Jimmy felt he might be up for a little genuine female companionship—maybe a woman he could enjoy hanging with, someone he could talk to, and maybe even someone who cared about him.

As Jimmy drove out of Las Vegas, he thought about all the great things he could offer a woman. He considered that maybe it was time to slow down—he knew he couldn’t continue to party like this forever. Having a cool, sexy babe by his side might lend some stability to his life. The living-out-of-a-hotel routine was getting old. He began to seriously contemplate his next step: the purchase of a mansion. What better way to attract a woman than to impress her with his home?

Some dickweed in a Corvette blew by Jimmy as he headed west, and Jimmy downshifted and stabbed the throttle. The five-hundred-horsepower engine roared to life, and the Lamborghini accelerated like it was shot from a cannon. Jimmy blew by the Corvette at 150, and reached 170 before he backed off. He had a huge grin plastered on his face. What a rush! His Lamborghini was the baddest car on the road, and he was headed to Tahoe, where the beauty of the alpine lake, plus the abundance of night life, made it the perfect place to live. He had checked out some real-estate magazines, and there were plenty of palatial homes to choose from.

Jimmy stopped in Barstow to fill his tank. He was thinking of fast food, but the remnant of last night’s blow was whispering his name from the bindle he’d stashed in his pack of Marlboros. So Jimmy put off eating and instead powdered his nose, then hit the gas and hightailed out to 395, north toward Lake Tahoe.

D
espite Cody and Sheila urging me to peg the throttle, I resisted pushing the Ford’s small motor to its breaking point. “It’s the only car we got,” I said. They grumbled briefly and fell silent. It took thirty-five minutes to reach the exit for Lone Pine, which was located at the base of Mount Whitney. I drove across a bridge over a small river and onto the main drag, where crumbling stucco structures with old wood façades were interspersed with newer, remodeled stores and restaurants. Most of the stores on the street offered fishing, camping, and mountaineering gear. The buildings were all dwarfed by a massive pine and fir covered ridge that rose behind the town. It wasn’t long before we spotted Jimmy’s car.

It was parked in front of Miner’s Bar & Grill, a beat-up, aging joint with a wood-post fence out front, as if they expected a pack of cowboys might ride up at any moment and hitch their horses. We parked, but before we could get out, Sheila said, “Now, listen. After I talk to him awhile, I’ll get up and go to the ladies room. Then you two go sit with him. Tell him you’re not patient men, and he better cooperate.”

“You mean, scare him a little,” I said.

“That’s right. Just make it quick. The less said the better. Just make your point and let him be. If he asks questions, don’t answer.”

Sheila led us into the building. It was a larger room than I expected and my eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. The air was dusty, and the murmur of voices from the day drinkers was barely discernible. At the far end of the bar sat a man with shoulder-length blond hair, a dark shirt with some fancy embroidery, and lizard-skin boots.

Cody and I followed as Sheila approached him. “Hello, Jimmy,” she said. He turned to her and blinked a couple times. Then his mouth fell open and his eyes widened. Cody and I leaned on the bar and watched them. “It’s been a long time,” Sheila said.

Jimmy stammered something unintelligible, then managed a weak smile. “What brings you out here, Sheila?” Trying to sound cool, like he wasn’t surprised.

“Let’s go sit, and I’ll tell you.”

They moved to a far table, and Cody and I took a table about fifteen feet away. Jimmy was facing us, and we stared him down as Sheila spoke quietly. When Jimmy responded, he furrowed his brow and kept turning his hands up, then his eyes went round and he sucked his cheeks in. After ten minutes Sheila left the table and headed to the ladies room.

We walked over and sat across from Jimmy.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“We’re bad news for you, that’s who,” Cody said.

“This has got to be some kind of joke, right?” Jimmy said, and raised his highball to his lips, but I slapped the glass out of his hand. It thudded against the wooden floorboards, and I could hear the chatter at the bar grow quiet. “I ain’t laughing,” I said.

“Whoa,” Jimmy said.

“I hope you have the right answers for Sheila,” Cody said.

“Hey, I’m just—”

“But maybe you’ll have to learn the hard way.”

Jimmy swallowed, out of words for the moment.

“Don’t be an asshole all your life,” I said, as Sheila came back to the table.

They talked a few minutes more while we went to the bar to assure the bartender everything was cool. We waited there until Sheila and Jimmy stood and walked toward the front door.

“I’m going to ride with Jimmy,” Sheila said, once we were standing on the sidewalk in front of the bar. “We’ll continue north to Lake Tahoe.” I squinted into the midafternoon sun and watched Jimmy hand his keys to his stepmom.

“Just a nice, pleasant drive,” Cody said to Jimmy. “We’ll be right behind you.”

Sheila climbed behind the wheel of the Lamborghini. Jimmy gave me a curious look, then got into the passenger seat. It had been fifteen years since he’d seen me last. I’d recognized him—did he recognize me, or had too much booze killed his memory?

Sheila kept the Lamborghini under eighty for the next hour, as we drove along the desert floor under the shadow of granite walls veined with moss and gnarled branches. We passed the exit for Bishop, climbed into the Sierras, and drove past the entrance to Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort. South Lake Tahoe lay three hours ahead.

“Did Sheila give you much background on Jimmy?” I asked Cody, as we tailed the Lamborghini along the increasingly curvy road.

“Enough to know he’s a real loser.”

“You think he’s a bad person?”

“He ain’t a good person, Dirt.”

“Does that give her the right to extort his money?”

“Extort?”

I looked at Cody. “Yeah. That’s what she’s doing, right?”

“Watch the road, would you?” he said, as a big rig came around a corner. “Extortion means she would specifically threaten him. As in, ‘Give me the money or I’ll break your legs.’”

“So having us rattle him a bit is no issue.”

“Not the way I see it.”

“Do you know what her game is, Cody?”

“Her game? What are you talking about?”

“She’s got to have some angle to convince him to share his winnings. Do you really think Sheila planned on Jimmy handing over a chunk of money just for the asking?”

Cody didn’t reply. I glanced over and saw a flicker of uncertainty on his face.

“She said there’s some people from his past he wants nothing to do with,” Cody said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling the smoke quickly. “She felt her knowledge of, or access to, these people would motivate him.”

“Who are these people?”

“That’s all she told me. She wasn’t specific.”

We drove on and dropped into a forested valley where the road was straight and flat. I didn’t think Cody was hiding anything from me, and I couldn’t really blame him for his lack of insight into Sheila’s plans. I remembered the first night I’d met her. We ended up at my cabin to sign my contract, and she had me panting like a stray dog in heat. And when I dropped her off, most of my questions were still unanswered. But that didn’t mean I would continue to let her draw me into her scheme without knowing what I was in for.

Regardless of my suspicions about Sheila, I was happy Cody was enjoying her sensual charms. At least one of us was. He seemed much happier than I’d seen him since his divorce.

I lit one of Cody’s smokes, and he handed me a fresh beer. “What the hell, old buddy,” I said.

“That’s more like it, Dirt. Whatever happens, happens. I doubt we’ll run into anything we can’t handle.”

We settled in and enjoyed the last couple hours of the drive, reminiscing about old times, times we were drunk, women we’d bedded, and even men we had killed.

G
arrett Rancour rolled out of bed and brewed a cup of coffee in the little percolator in his room at the Motel 6 on the edge of Carson City. Rancour enjoyed staying at the hotel. It was a nice change from the dingy room in San Jose he’d rented after being released from county lockup. He appreciated getting a break from his whacked-out roommates, who weren’t much of an upgrade from the jailbirds Rancour had bunked with during his fifteen month jolt. He appreciated the solitude of the hotel and the freedom it gave him from the constant presence of idiots.

Speaking of idiots, he wondered where Sanzini was. A wide grin split Rancour’s face as he recalled the events of the previous night. Sanzini had gotten his ass kicked twice, first by the bouncer in the cathouse, and then he’d taken a royal pounding by the hard-case dude out in the parking lot. He had behaved like a moron, and got just what he deserved, including the loss of his coat.

Rancour considered what Sanzini would do next. Without Rancour’s help, Sanzini would be clueless as to the whereabouts of Jimmy Homestead. Having taken a serious beating and minus his leather jacket, he would probably plant his dumb ass on his Harley and ride home to his mother’s house to lick his wounds. What else could he do?