Speed Metal Blues: A Dan Reno Novel (20 page)

“Tell me about the men who beat you,” the voice said. Strange, Pedro thought. The man’s English was nearly perfect, just a hint of accent.

In a halting voice, Pedro described the men in white shirts and black pants. The Angel grunted in satisfaction and asked no questions when Pedro finished talking. It seemed like The Angel was already familiar with the white trash thugs who were connected to the bad cops. Good, Pedro thought, touching his ribs and wincing.

Another hour stretched by. Pedro tried thinking positive thoughts, reminding himself he had four thousand in cash stashed away, and more would be coming once they could resume business. The cops trying to force them out of town were standing between him and his plans to reinvent his life, to open a cantina in Cabo. He had never seen the ocean, had never seen waves crashing on a beach. He knew nothing but the gritty slums of Juarez. How much more of the world might he see one day? The answer depended on one thing—money.

A shiver of panic swept through Pedro when he considered the money meant nothing if he was dead. The Angel was rumored to be responsible for the murders of entire families in Juarez. It was said he operated in the shadows, a ghostly presence briefly presenting himself to his victims before the soft sputter of his silenced TEC-9 splattered the walls with chunks of bone and gore. Might Pedro wake in the morning, maybe as soon as tomorrow, to see the grim face of The Angel, in the last moment before his life was ended by a few well-placed bullets?

Pedro squeezed his eyes tightly, pushing the fear away. The events of his life had already been set in motion, and if his death was to be, then it would be. All he could do was stay alert, use his intelligence and instinct, and above all, do nothing stupid, nothing that would give The Angel more of a reason to kill him than he might already have.

Setting his jaw, Pedro resolved to stay focused on the task at hand. The thought had no sooner entered his head when a white van pulled into the lot, the doors swinging open to reveal Pete Saxton and Dave Boyce.

“There, the white van, those two.” Pedro pointed and watched the two men conversing as they walked to the main entrance and disappeared behind the glass doors.

Taking the binoculars from his eyes, Pedro waited, the seconds ticking by, the presence in the backseat like a random hand of fate that could strike him down or set him free on a whim.

“You can go now,” the voice said finally.

Pedro slid out the door and didn’t look back.

• • •

I woke early and when the sun rose I left my house wearing a fifty-pound pack. I jogged a mile through the meadow behind my backyard, until the terrain turned steep and the trail narrowed, forcing me to slow to a walk. The mountainside was covered in buttercups and wild grass, the spring air crisp and sweet with their fragrance. Far above me, a wide ledge of snow clung to a rock face, the smooth granite streaked dark with runoff. Now hiking up a difficult grade, I reached a section where a landslide had washed out the path, leaving a sheer dirt cliff falling to a river hundreds of feet below. I kicked a few pebbles over the edge, watching the rocks spiral downward. Then I turned back, and two hours later was showered and sitting at my desk, dialing Reno PD.

“Detective Frank Swaney, please.”

“Detective Swaney no longer works here,” said a gravelly female voice. I asked if she knew how I could reach him.

“Try Carson City PD. I believe he took a job there.”

“How about Detective Jacob Booker?”

“He’s not in yet. May I take a message?”

“Do you expect him today?”

“I don’t know. I suggest leaving a message.”

“All right. Tell him I’d like to get his feedback on a case from a couple years ago. Two men were arrested for spray painting pentagrams on a church.” I left my number and heard Cody shuffling around in my guest room. He came out shirtless, his chest a massive pale slab, his shoulders wider than the doorway.

“Lookee here,” he said, bending down and showing me the four inches of stitches across his left deltoid, the black sutures like the legs of an upended centipede.

“How’s it feel?”

“Itches a little, but the pain’s mostly gone.” He pulled a T-shirt over his head and walked to my coffee pot.

“Listen,” I said, “If we catch Loohan, I’ll split the bounty with you.”

“If? What happened to
when
? What about your leads?”

“I left a message for one cop in Reno. The other is supposed to now be working in Carson. I haven’t made any calls on the vandals yet.”

“Tell you what—make your calls on the road. I’m ready to hit it.”

“What’s the hurry?”

He raised his eyebrows at me, a smile on the corner of his mouth. Then he yanked on his body armor, secured the straps, and spun the cylinder on his big pistol.

“Gear up, partner. Time’s a wastin’.”

“You’re not hungry?” I asked.

“I’ll eat later.”

Five minutes later we gunned it out of town under a cobalt blue sky, Cody’s tires spitting dirt on the sun-warmed road, the radio blasting “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers” by ZZ Top.

“God, I love this song,” Cody said, cranking the volume, his palms pounding on the steering wheel, his green eyes charged with a secret energy, as if he were anticipating a salvation known only to him.

For as long as I’d known Cody, he’d avoided a static lifestyle. Downtime and boredom were his worst enemies. I imagined that in his quiet, solitary moments, perhaps when he was alone in his apartment at night, straight booze might not be adequate to soothe the wounds of his past. His pain could only be extinguished by action, by confronting his demons, by violence. This was his defense mechanism, how he dealt with the grief of a father who abandoned him and an uncaring mother. Crazy as it sounds, living on the edge provided the balm for his unhealed scars. I’m sure psychology professionals would have a field day with this one, but his method for dealing with his pain was keeping him sane. Hell, in a world where criminally demented acts are routine, Cody was probably saner than most.

As we climbed Spooner Pass, I called the numbers I’d found for the two men charged with hate crimes for defiling places of worship. The first number, for a Greg Ruehr, was disconnected. I dialed the second number and almost gave up before a woman finally answered.

“Hi, Eric Wenhert, please.”

There was a pause. “Who’s calling?”

“This is Pete Johnson. We went to high school together.”

“Well, he’s not here.”

“Does he still live there?”

“I’m sorry, he doesn’t,” the monotone voice said, then the line went dead.

“How rude,” I said. “I believe we’ll have to pay her a visit.”

“Where?”

“Address is in Reno, out toward Sparks.”

“You want to drive straight there?”

“No. Let’s stop at Carson City PD first. I want to see if my old buddy DeHart is around.”

“Your old buddy? The same one who locked you up for two days last year without arresting you?”

“Yeah. Maybe he can hook us up with this cop, Swaney. DeHart owes me.”

“I’m sure you feel he does.”

“Always the skeptic.”

Cody smiled, downshifting as we came off the grade and out of the rolling hills. When we reached Carson Valley, the cloudless sky and patches of green on the far slopes almost made the city look pleasant. We drove through town and made our way to the sheriff’s office, a white colonial style structure with huge oaks out front, neatly trimmed hedges, and scrolled iron banisters lining the walkway to the main entrance. In a city sprawled on a forgettable plot of desert land and defined by a decaying downtown surrounded by car lots and convenience stores, the elegant police headquarters almost seemed like someone’s idea of an ironic joke.

But inside it looked a lot like any other cop shop, drab and colorless, as if the designers conceded any attempt at cheerful décor would be wasted on most visitors. Two uniformed women sat behind bulletproof glass, talking through round speakers to citizens in varying stages of distress. The line was three deep. Cody and I stood waiting, watching patrolmen and detectives come and go out a steel side door that buzzed and clanged like those in a prison.

Ten minutes later we reached the counter and I asked a gray-haired lady if Lieutenant DeHart was available. Before she could answer, I heard a familiar voice from behind.

“Reno, Gibbons, I figured I’d see you soon enough.”

I turned. “Lieutenant.”

Gordon DeHart was portly and mostly bald, and if not for the .38 on his side, he could have been mistaken for a neighborhood grocer. He wore an out-of-style pair of wire-rim glasses on his nose, the skin porous and reddened around the nostrils, as if he suffered from chronic allergies. The size of his stomach caused his slacks to curl over at the waistline, his belt buckle hidden under the mass. His hands looked soft, almost puffy, but when we shook, his grip was like a vice. He looked over his glasses at me, his eyes blunt and hard, a reminder that appearances could be deceiving, and he was not a man to be taken lightly.

“Do you have a minute, Lieutenant?”

“Is this regarding Jason Loohan?”

“How’d you know?”

“I spoke with Marcus Grier.”

We followed him through the steel door into the squad room, around metal desks and into his office. He hiked a haunch onto his credenza and crossed his fingers in his lap.

“I’m glad you saw fit to stop by and keep me advised of your activities in my town,” he said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cody begin to smile. I spoke quickly, before he could.

“You know I always cooperate with the authorities, Lieutenant. Do you—”

“Then why didn’t you report being shot at last week?”

“An oversight.”

“Don’t let it happen again. I can always have your cot made up.”

“Yeah, I suppose you could.”

“I advise you keep that in mind.” I nodded, and apparently that was good enough for him. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then walked behind his desk and sat in a leather chair.

“Loohan is apparently into devil worship,” I said. “I’m trying to track down fellow Satanists or cults in the area. Any ideas?”

His eyes staring off, Dehart thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah. Maybe. A local character name Luther Conway. A couple years back he got noticed when he proclaimed himself the son of Lucifer.”

“That’s a new one,” Cody said.

“He was generally considered a harmless whack job, until he started hosting weekly services at his house. He sucked in a few misguided high school kids, and then there was a rash of cat killings near his home. We shut him down after that, locked him up for a week on a contributing charge. From what I understand, he was taught some religion by a couple of his cellmates.

“Chuga-chuga-choo-choo,” Cody chuckled. When I looked at him, he shrugged. “Hey, I like cats.”

“Is Luther still in town?” I asked.

“Not sure.” DeHart punched his keyboard and a printer behind him clattered. He handed me a sheet of paper with an address. “Maybe he still lives there.”

“How about a cop named Frank Swaney? Does he work for you?”

“Swaney? Yeah, why?”

“When he was with Reno PD, he busted a couple punks for vandalizing churches and a synagogue. I’d like to talk with him about the case.”

“He’s on patrol. I’ll have him call you.”

Dehart took a call after that and a deputy escorted us out. In the parking lot, I opened a map and found the street address for Luther Conway.

“I can just imagine the newspaper headline,” Cody said, leaning on his elbows over the hood. “Son of Satan gets ass reamed in Carson City jail, vows to possess souls of tormentors.”

“What newspaper, the
National Enquirer
?”

We drove north out of town. A desolate stretch of high desert lay before us, the barren flatlands split by the pavement and banked by ridgelines distant and nameless. After fifteen minutes we came off a small rise and Reno lay before us, the casinos and hotels clustered against the jaded sky, a mute testimony that twenty buildings of more than twenty stories surely justified Reno’s claim that it was the biggest little city in the world.

Say your luck’s run out, the last steady job you had was months back, and you’ve become a denizen of the streets. Winter comes around and the cold rain in Seattle convinces you it’s time to head south for warmer climes. So you set out for Phoenix, visions of warm, dry weather dancing in your head. You hop a train, full of drunken adventure and optimism, fueled by the quart bottle of malt liquor hidden inside your pea coat. But when you wake in the morning, you’re bleary, flat busted, and hungry. The only problem, you ain’t in Arizona, not by a long shot. Your train has stopped in Reno, and out you go, to join the ragtag family of winos that inhabit the crumbling downtown boulevards.

While it’s true downtown Reno is the dingy home to a high population of transients, upscale communities on the city’s outskirts were thriving, mostly new developments catering to retired California baby boomers. Fancy shopping malls had sprung up to accommodate the influx of new residents, countering a decade of economic deterioration. In the last ten years, Reno had evolved from a second-rate gambling destination into something more complex, a patchwork of squalor, middle class, and the newly arrived affluent.

I didn’t know quite what to make of the neighborhood where Dehart said Luther Conway might still be living. A single-story apartment complex stretched along one side of the avenue, its cracked stucco sun-bleached and colorless. Across from the apartments was a ranch that appeared deserted, the barn collapsed, a rusted tractor listing to one side, as if being slowly consumed by the overgrown fields. Next door was a small factory of some kind, its dirt parking lot scattered with cars, a gray plume spewing from a single smoke stack. A row of small cookie-cutter houses opposite the factory led to the end of the road, where a larger home, an old Victorian, sat near a fenced-off concrete aqueduct.

Cody stopped in front of the house and shut off the motor. The Victorian was beige in color, its woodwork ornate, the windows hidden behind gray shutters. A purple 1960s Lincoln Continental with suicide doors sat gleaming in a gravel driveway leading to a flat-roofed garage behind the property. We stepped up to the porch and banged on the door with a brass knocker shaped like a goat’s head.