Speed Metal Blues: A Dan Reno Novel (3 page)

The middle-aged lady bartender asked me if I was ready for a refill. I declined, and listened as she approached her new customers.

“Gimme a Bud and a shot of brown water,” one said loudly.

“Same here,” said the second man. His voice was abrupt, the syllables merged and almost indecipherable.

“Brown water? You mean whiskey?”

“Goddamn right I do.”

“Any particular brand?”

“Yeah, the eighty proof kind.”

I looked out the window, watching the occasional car pass by. Sunlight filtered into the bar and cast a pattern across the wooden floorboards. A newly divorced man who worked as a plumber shot pool, alone with his thoughts.

“Hey, lady, bring us another round over here!”

“Yeah, like pronto!” said the second man. He had a speech impediment of some kind.

I turned toward them. From where I sat, I could see the man with the odd voice was of average height and had sandy-colored hair. He looked back at me and I noticed his shoulders seemed deformed. I stared at him, more out of curiosity than anything else.

“You got some problem?” he said, his words slapping at the air between us. The bar went quiet.

“Not really. Do you?”

He pushed himself off his barstool and walked to where I sat, his arms swinging at an unnatural angle. His friend, slightly taller, his hair buzz cut and a ring in his nostril, followed behind him. I sat facing out from the bar.

“What you looking at?” the sandy-haired man said. His shoulder joints were turned inward, causing his hands to hang with the palms facing to his rear, like an ape’s. It wasn’t something that could have been the result of an accident—it must have been a genetic deformity.

“This is a quiet, neighborhood lounge,” I said. “Especially on Sundays. You want to get drunk and loud, take it somewhere else.”

“What are you, a wannabe cop?” said the one with the ring hanging from his nose. His arms were crisscrossed with tattoos, and I recognized him as one of the pack from Zeke’s mosh pit.

I looked at the two men and decided this was not what I wanted for my afternoon. I threw some cash on the bar and stood to leave. “Knock yourselves out, fellas,” I said.

“Hold on a second,” the taller man said. “I want you to see something.” He grabbed my empty cocktail glass, a short, thick-bodied variety many bars no longer used. “Rabbit,” he said, addressing his friend. He turned the tumbler upside down on the bar and backed away.

Rabbit stepped forward. He looked at me with an expression I think was meant to be intimidating, but one of his eyes wandered, ruining the effect. I shrugged and suppressed a smile. But then he whirled his arm overhead, the elbow locked, and slammed his palm down on the glass. The impact sounded like two cars colliding at high speed. Shards of glass flew like shrapnel, and the handful of patrons at the bar jumped from their stools.

“What the ever livin’ hell?” the bartender shrieked, hurrying to where Rabbit was picking slivers of glass from his blood-flecked palm. The pulverized remains of the tumbler were imbedded in the lacquered surface of the bar.

“That was pretty impressive,” I said. “I’d shake hands with you, but I think I’ll pass.”

Rabbit barked out a short laugh. “Pretty impressive,” he repeated. “Right, Tom?”

“Nice job,” the man said, patting Rabbit on the shoulder. Then he looked at me, a crooked grin beginning on his mug.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, “me and my pals think you’re a yump-chugging queer bait, and we invite you to join us at Zeke’s for the show next week. But we don’t expect to see you, because we think you’re probably too much of a pussy to leave home without your gun.”

“Your pals? You mean HCU?”

He peeled back his sleeve to show the words “Hard Core United” tattooed on his shoulder. The capital letters were inked dark and bold.

“I’m calling 911,” the bartender said.

“Good for you, hag,” Tom said. He turned and headed for the exit. Rabbit looked confused for a second, then straightened and followed him out of the bar, but first he gave me a short wave, as if we were friends.

I walked outside and watched them climb into a black Buick sedan with faded paint and a long key scratch down one side. As they drove away in a cloud of dirt and smoke, I jotted down the license number. The bartender came out front, and I asked her for a cigarette.

“Do you know those jerks?” she asked.

“No, not really.”

“I swear I’m gonna start keeping my .38 underneath the bar. If those losers ever come back I’ll straighten their shit out.”

“Now, take it easy, Pam.”

“What? Screw that.”

A minute later Marcus Grier pulled up. He turned off his bubble lights when he saw me leaning against the building. The citizenry of South Lake Tahoe generally regarded Grier as a polite and friendly public servant. For the most part, it was an accurate assessment. But if pushed, or perhaps caught at the wrong moment, there was a side to Grier that could be both unexpected and alarming. Grier had been raised in the Deep South, and once, after we’d met over stiff drinks to discuss a case, he spoke to me of his past. It left no doubt in my mind that beneath his outwardly benign personality, hot coals of rage smoldered in corners of his psyche he preferred not to visit.

He walked toward where the bartender and I stood, his down-turned lips creasing his heavy jowls, his eyes dark beneath the shadow of his cap. His body, resembling an overfilled inner tube, rendered him the butt of occasional jokes. Anyone who ever saw him in a physical altercation knew better.

His eyes flashed at me and he shook his head. “What’s going on here?” he asked the bartender.

“A couple white trash a-holes came in and tried to pick a fight. One broke a glass on the bar. Come see the mark it made. It will probably need to be sanded and re-stained.”

We went into the bar, and Grier studied the damage to the bar top.

“These guys were real weirdos,” she said. “The one who broke the glass looked like some kind of circus freak. I think maybe he was a mental retard.”

Grier finished taking her statement, and I went with him to his cruiser.

“It was a couple of the HCU boys. Here’s their license number,” I said, handing him a cocktail napkin. He tossed it on his dashboard, then crossed his arms and leaned on the car. We both stared out over Lake Tahoe. The sky was cloudless, the stone faces on the far side of the lake streaked with snow. The sun burned white against the blue of the sky, the heat pleasant after the long winter.

“I never thought it would be like this when I moved here,” he said.

“Like what?”

He didn’t respond, then he shook his head, and when he looked at me, something about his expression made me remember that Grier was a man with a wife and children, considerations I might never have.

“Listen,” he said, getting into his squad car and starting the engine, “if any of those gangbangers mess with you, call me—no one else, got it? And another thing. Don’t provoke them. I’ve got enough problems.”

“Why would
I
provoke
them
?” I said, but he was already pulling away, his tires crunching on the gravel, the sun reflecting off his windshield in silver bursts.

• • •

A few minutes later I returned to my home, an updated three-bedroom A-frame a mile off the lake and within staggering distance of Whiskey Dick’s. I was at my desk, idly browsing the Internet and contemplating whether to have another drink and resume my earlier buzz, when my cell rang with a number I didn’t recognize.

“Is this Mr. Reno?”

“Yes.”

“Hi, this is Juan Perez. Remember me?”

“Of course, Juan. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” he said, then hesitated.

“Well, what’s up, my man?”

“They assigned us a project at school for career day,” he blurted. “We need to bring an adult to talk to the class about their job. Most kids are bringing their mom or dad.”

“Oh,” I said. Juan was a teenager who worked at The Redwood Tavern, a place I sometimes went for a steak or drinks. I’d hired him a month ago to help me build a fence. He was a small kid, and I’d been hesitant since it was heavy, physical work, but he’d busted his ass, damn near outworked me.

“Do you think you could talk to my class?”

“Hell, Juan, I don’t know what I’d say to a bunch of high school kids. Are you sure I’m who you want for this?”

“I think they’d think it was cool hearing from a private eye.”

“Ahh,” I said. I almost asked him about his parents before I remembered they were back in Mexico. He was living here with his older sister, relying on their combined income to survive.

“Okay, I guess so,” I said. “When is it?”

“Two weeks from now.”

“All right. What do I need to do to be ready?”

“I have a bunch of papers for you to read.”

“How about if you drop them off at my house?”

“Will you be there tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, I should be around.”

We hung up, and I stared at my blank computer screen, wondering how I might whitewash my career to pass it off as respectable to a room full of sixteen-year-olds. The reality was I worked sporadically—my ability to drum up business was questionable, on a good day. If not for the good fortune of pulling a bag stuffed with cash out of a burning house last fall, I’d probably have been forced to pursue other career options, most likely in San Jose, where I used to live.

Playing the role of the responsible adult, I would probably discourage the kids from my profession, or at least tell them to definitely seek a firm that offered full health benefits. As an independent contractor, I paid my own health insurance, and I made damn sure to stay current on the payments. In the course of my work, I’d nearly lost two fingers to frostbite, my life had been saved by body armor at least twice, and I’d been involved in more physical altercations than I could remember. In the process, I’d killed six men. Seven, if I included a bail skip who ran in front of a bus while I was chasing him.

I left my desk and washed the few dishes in my sink. Besides health and financial risks, the profession was also hell on relationships. Or maybe that was just an excuse. My first and only wife left me when I was drinking heavily after first killing a man. My longest relationship after that was with an ex-prostitute fifteen years my junior, who lived with me here in Tahoe for six months before running off. I kept the plates and glasses she bought neatly arranged in my kitchen cupboard, the sole reminder my home had once enjoyed a woman’s touch.

The best romantic prospect I had now was a curvy brunette named Candi who lived six hours down the road in Elko. She stayed with me for a week during the winter, and we hit the local ski resort every day. I thought we made a hell of a team, her on a snowboard and me skiing on the new Rossignols I’d bought with my windfall. We had talked of her moving to Tahoe permanently, but that was when we lay naked on my crushed sheets, aglow with booze and sexual chemistry. The conversation didn’t continue once we were sober and dressed. But she still took my calls, so I hadn’t lost hope we could work something out. Hope’s cheap, so I indulge myself.

• • •

I swept the nails from the street and mowed my lawn, which had grown in nicely in the few weeks since the snowpack melted. After watering the flowers lining the walkway, I opened an energy drink and began working out on the bench press in my garage. I had just finished the sixth set of ten when my cell rang.

“I’m just coming over Spooner Pass,” Cody Gibbons said. “You have dinner yet?”

“Nope.”

“Why don’t you meet me at Zeke’s Pit? I haven’t had real Texas brisket since I was there last. No one knows how to make it in San Jose.”

“I got bad news, Cody. Zeke’s restaurant is closed down.”

“What?”

“Zeke Papas passed away a few months back and left the joint to his son. The prick shut down the dining room and gutted the bar. The place now hosts death-rock concerts.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I wish I was. Why don’t you stop at Armadillo Willy’s in Stateline and bring some grub over to my place?”

“Aw, shit,” he sighed. “All right, I’ll see you in half an hour.”

I set the phone down and removed a five-pound iron plate from each side of my weight bar. Despite being old and rusty, the weights were reliable and unchanging, unlike California’s restaurants and bars. Having lived in northern California most of my life, I’d witnessed almost all my favorite hangouts close down. Apparently there wasn’t much market left for dark, ramshackle joints. They’d been replaced by strip-mall eateries offering Asian-fusion cuisine, sushi, and obscure varieties of ethnic food I had no interest in trying.

But business is business, and what’s the point in complaining about a society that gives the public what it wants? In the case of Zeke’s, though, their barbequed fare was popular and considered top notch. Even on weeknights the joint was packed. The shuttering of the restaurant seemed not only unnecessary, but abrupt and pointless.

I lay on my bench and pumped out another ten reps, then checked my refrigerator and drove out to the local convenience store for a case of beer. Cody could make six-packs vanish in minutes.

When I returned home, he had just pulled up and was climbing out of his red, dual-cab Dodge truck. He wore tennis shoes, faded blue jeans, and a gray Utah State sweatshirt stretched tight around his shoulders. He waved at me with his free hand, the other clutching a plastic bag heavy with take-out food. At six-five and around three hundred, Cody’s physical presence reminded me of the abominable snowman, but he’d trimmed and neatened his red beard since I’d last seen him, lessening the effect. He hadn’t changed his hairstyle, though—the blond mop covering his head was still straw-like and unruly.

“Dirty Double Crossin’ Dan,” he greeted me, the nickname resulting from a drunken episode at a pickup bar at least fifteen years ago. Cody claimed I had moved in on a woman he was hitting on, and when he came back from the men’s room, I’d already left with her. I had no recollection of the night in question.

“You look like you’re staying busy,” he said, nodding at the bandage above my eye. “Grab my duffel bag, would you?”