Dying for the Highlife (17 page)

“I guess so,” Jimmy said with a shrug.

“And now you’re being told you need to pay two million to resolve it?”

“Basically, yeah.”

“I think you might need some protection until we get to the bottom of this.”

“At least until we know what we’re dealing with,” John said.

“Here’s what I can do for you,” Lou said, the diamond studded ring on his finger clinking against his wine glass. “First, I’ll investigate this woman’s story to find out if there’s any evidence to back it up. I’ll see what I can find out about the two guys with her. I’ll work to learn if she has any connection to anyone linked to a Mexican drug cartel. If so, I’ll find out, but it will take some digging. While I’m working on this, I think the most prudent thing would be for you both to become invisible.”

“What, you mean go into hiding?” Jimmy said.

“No, not exactly. The main thing is, I don’t want you having any more contact with your stepmother. I don’t want her to be able to find you. I’d suggest leaving the area.”

“Shit, I was ready to start shopping for a house.”

Lou sipped from his wine glass. “I think you probably want to wait on that.”

“Should we just go stay in a hotel somewhere?” John asked.

“We could always go chill in Mexico,” Jimmy added.

Lou shook his head. “I don’t think that’s necessary. Here’s an idea—I know a realtor in Reno who can rent you a vacation home, and she’ll let you use a phony name on the paperwork. You’ll be untraceable.”

The waiter brought plates of pasta and meat and a fresh bottle of red wine.

“Sheila thought I was going to give her the two mil today,” Jimmy said, around a mouthful of lasagna. “I turned my cell phone off, but I’m sure she’s called.”

Lou considered that for a moment. “It’s probably not a great idea for you to stay here tonight. You can spend the night at my place. I’ve got plenty of room.”

“You really think we’re in danger?” John said.

“Those two guys with her are my concern,” Lou said. “If they catch up to you now, it could be a problem.”

“You know, I swear I recognized one of those guys,” Jimmy said. “But I just can’t place him.”

“Really? Keep trying to remember. A name would definitely help.”

“I want to get my Lamborghini,” Jimmy said. “It’s still at Harrah’s. Sheila took my keys, but I’ve got a spare pair.”

John cleared his throat. “I thought we should leave it there,” he said. “And if Sheila takes a spin, have her arrested for stealing it.”

“It’s a nice thought. But auto theft is almost never prosecuted if the accused has the keys. Tell you what—why don’t I go with you to pick it up? Just in case they’re watching your car.” Lou looked at the pair, who nodded in agreement.

When they left the restaurant, Lou had a check from Jimmy for $20,000, to cover what John owed, with the balance to serve as a retainer. Jimmy turned on his cell before they got in their cars to head to Harrah’s.

“She called three times,” he said. “Hold on, she left a message.” Jimmy listened to Sheila saying she was concerned Jimmy was non-responsive, and that he needed to call her and arrange the funds right away or things could get ugly. Jimmy pressed a button and handed the phone to Lou, who carefully listened to the entire message.

“Well,” he said with a smile. “She sounds like quite a piece of work. Don’t erase it.”

Lou drove his black all-wheel-drive Lexus SUV and followed John’s LTD to Harrah’s parking garage. They picked up Jimmy’s car without incident, then Lou led them up a steep, winding road to his split-level house in a residential development in Nevada. The stands of redwood separating the homes were so thick the neighbors couldn’t see each other’s houses.

“Nice spread, Lou. You must have done well for yourself,” John said, climbing from his car and looking around.

“I got a good pension when I left the force.”

John and Jimmy settled into Lou’s downstairs quarters, a large room with a pool table, wet bar, big screen TV, and two couches. Lou brought in a tape recorder and began asking questions. He first asked Jimmy to provide detailed descriptions of the two men with Sheila, and then he began probing into the Homestead family history.

He wanted to know about John’s relationship with Sheila, how it had started and how it ended. He wanted a chronological account of everywhere Jimmy had been and everyone he’d met since he left his parents’ home. He asked about every family member in the Homestead clan. An hour later, when it seemed to John they must have covered every possible piece of relevant information, Lou started all over again, pushing for even more detail.

Only when Lou asked about his relationship with Sheila did Jimmy pause. He saw no reason to confide he’d had sex with her—especially not with his father there.

Finally Lou concluded the interview and left the Homesteads alone. They each took a couch, and within a minute John was snoring. Jimmy lay awake, thinking how bizarre the events of the last thirty-six hours had been. His emotions were in a jumble over the sudden arrival of his parents in his life. He didn’t quite know what to make of his old man showing up, but felt comfortable that time would sort it out. As far as Sheila, he now was sure the sleazebag was trying to run a scam on him, but she would be bitch-slapped back into the hole she crawled from, once Lou got done with her. The thought made Jimmy smile. He picked up his cell phone from the coffee table and listened to Sheila’s voice mail again. He repressed a giggle and started typing her a text message, and he almost laughed out loud when he was done punching in the letters. The message read, GO FUCK A DUCK. He hit the send button, a huge smile on his face, then put away his phone and fell peacefully asleep.

• • •

When they woke the next morning, Lou brought them coffee. He had showered, shaved, and dressed while they were still sleeping. In fact, he looked like he’d been up for hours.

“I called the realtor in Reno and explained you’ll need an anonymous rental. She understands and can set you up. Bring cash—you don’t want to use your credit card for this. Here are directions to her office. She’ll be waiting for you.”

They walked outside into the crisp, shaded morning, and as Jimmy was climbing into his sports car, Lou stopped him. “One more thing—your cell phone. Don’t use it and keep it turned off. Since Sheila has your number, she may try to track you by triangulating the signal.”

“Can she do that?” Jimmy said.

“Depends how motivated she is. But yes, it can be done.”

Jimmy put on his seat belt and fired up the Lamborghini, its twelve-cylinder motor coming alive with an exotic purr. John started his car, the engine clattering like a card stuck in a bicycle’s spokes. The two vehicles pulled away, father following son, as if they were attached by an invisible financial umbilical cord. Lou stood watching until they were gone, shaking his head at the sight. Then he walked back inside and went to work.

S
heila and Cody were waiting for me at a table in the main lounge at Harrah’s. Sheila sat cross-legged, her skirt hiked high up on her thighs. A cigarette dangled from her fingers, and her half-lidded eyes acknowledged me with practiced indifference. Cody sat across from her, staring off into space. I took a seat and helped myself to one of Sheila’s Virginia Slims.

“How’s everything, lovebirds?” I said.

Sheila blew out a stream of smoke. “Jimmy has checked out,” she said. “And he hasn’t taken my calls.”

“No shit, huh?”

She ignored my comment. I looked over at Cody, who seemed uncharacteristically sullen. He greeted me with a glance, silent for the moment.

“Is his car still here?”

“It was about an hour ago,” Sheila said.

I reached out and slapped Cody on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s take a walk. Wait for us here, Sheila.”

“What’s the matter?” I said, once we were out of her earshot.

“Looks like the honeymoon’s over.”

“It is, huh?”

“She’s really on the rag. There ain’t a goddamned thing I can say to snap her out of it.”

“Is this because Jimmy blew Dodge?”

“Probably.”

“Well, it’s no surprise.”

“I fucking know that, Dan. I just hate being treated like I got a highly contagious venereal disease.”

“What, is she blaming you?”

“She might as well be.”

“All right, look,” I said as we got off the elevator to the parking garage and spotted the Lamborghini. “The good news is his car is still here. I assume Jimmy has another set of keys. I’m going to replace the tracker with a freshly charged unit, and I can program the GPS alerts to go to your cell number. So if you want, you can wait for him to pick up his car, then go after him.”

“What about you?”

“Me? I got to make a living, Cody. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve delivered my end of the bargain to Sheila, and she owes me ten grand plus expenses. Any more work on my part would be above and beyond our contract. And given that I have no reason to believe she has the means to pay me, I’m not in a mood to burn further calories on this bullshit.”

Cody stared at me hard, but then his green eyes softened. “Christ, I feel like a dumb ass,” he said.

“Hey, man,” I said. “Don’t get down on yourself for trying to have a good time.” But the remark was disingenuous, and Cody saw right through it.

“Every woman I’ve been with since my divorce has screwed me over. You see a trend here?”

“I haven’t done much better, old buddy.”

“I’ve paid for everything since she hired me. I can’t wait to see my credit card bill.”

“It’s time to cut our losses. This party’s over.”

When we got to Jimmy’s car, Cody said, “Put the damn tracker on it anyway. You never know…”

But Sheila seemed to have already drawn her own conclusions. She was no longer at the lounge when we returned. A few minutes later, she emerged from the elevators with a rollaway suitcase.

“I need to return to San Jose,” she said. “I’ll be in touch, gentlemen.” She walked off toward the exit of the casino.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Look for my bill in your mailbox.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” she said. Cody and I followed her for a few steps, then stopped and watched her leave the building and get into a waiting taxi. We stood there for a moment after the cab drove away.

“Come on, let’s go,” I said.

“There goes one expensive piece of ass,” he said finally, his face screwed into a grimace.

Cody checked out of Harrah’s and came to my place to spend the night. He had trimmed his beard and looked somewhat less unruly than usual. We sat at my kitchen table, and he quietly asked for a bottle of whiskey. I wasn’t used to seeing Cody subdued, and I wondered if after a lifetime of bucking the odds, he was facing a time of reckoning. But after a couple of shots, the impetuous fire that was both his vice and his virtue returned, glowing in his eyes like high beams on a dark highway.

Cody’s best moments were also his worst. The attributes that had made him a great cop also led to his being fired from the force. His intuitions on criminal behavior were uncanny, but were due in part to his own disregard for convention or rules. His parents had considered him incorrigible, and his father had kicked him out of their home when Cody was fourteen. He forged his way on the street, and he never spoke of how he survived. But there was no doubt in my mind that his juvenile brushes with the law did not reveal the true nature and extent of his teenage criminality.

When it came to the opposite sex, Cody’s reckless libido and ribald charm attracted the type of women who recognized him as a kindred soul. Females needing to validate their desirability flocked to him. So did wild women who lived on the fringes of society. Stable, mainstream types avoided him like the plague. His first and only wife seemed fairly normal to me, and I can’t account for the chemistry that brought them together. Their marriage lasted two years before she handed him the divorce papers and never spoke to him again.

“Here’s an angle, Dirt,” he said, pouring me a shot. “Let’s track down Jimmy, and in return for him paying what Sheila owes us, we come clean with him.”

“Come clean with him? About what, Sheila’s scam? We don’t really know what she’s up to. At least I don’t.”

“Me neither, but it doesn’t matter. All we have to do is tell Jimmy she’s full of shit and he’s got nothing to worry about, and we were just a couple private dicks she hired to find him.”

I rolled the shot glass between my fingers, the amber fluid twinkling like a magical elixir. Cody raised his glass and smiled and nodded, as if he had just unlocked a great mystery. I knew better—he was just catching a buzz. But his idea intrigued me, and it reminded me that Cody had not survived living on the edge by accident. His resourcefulness in extracting himself from difficult situations, and righting those situations in his favor always surprised me.

“You don’t think Sheila really has anything on Jimmy?”

Cody shrugged. “I doubt it.”

I raised my glass and toasted Cody in return. “To our partnership,” I said.

J
ohn watched his son’s Lamborghini as he followed it through Stateline, Nevada. It looked like a futuristic dayglow orange toy that might sprout wings and take flight at any moment. John was a bit concerned that the car was an ultimate attention magnet—not a good thing given their situation, but he resigned himself to not worry about it.

Jimmy stopped at a bank before they headed around the lake toward Reno, and fifteen minutes later walked out with a large envelope stuffed with cash. “Hey, if I lose you heading up Spooner pass, don’t worry. I’ll stop and wait for you,” Jimmy said. John wanted to tell him to not do anything stupid, but settled for, “Just be careful, okay, son?” Jimmy responded with an irreverent smile.

Sure enough, once they turned east at Junction 28, Jimmy downshifted and accelerated as if a green flag had waved. He rounded the first sweeping curve, and John saw no more of him. The grade was moderate as the road climbed out of the forest and into the sparse desert terrain of the Eastern Sierra. It was a crisp morning, and winter would probably come early this year, John thought. The Ford labored in the thin air, heading toward the summit at seven thousand feet. John could smell his motor oil burning, and when he looked in the rearview mirror, he saw a haze of white exhaust smoke. It wouldn’t be long before the LTD blew its final gasket and would have to be retired to the scrap heap.