Speed Metal Blues: A Dan Reno Novel, Page 2

  “What’s your deal with Dan Reno, Grier? You two queer for each other?”

  “Get out of here, you jackasses,” Grier said.

  “Come on, Dave,” Saxton said. “We’re wasting our time.”

  After they left Grier checked his blood pressure with a portable device he strapped to his wrist. Then he opened the window and turned on his fan, trying to blow the stink out of his office.

  • • •

  Not far from the Nevada border and the casinos, a collection of apartment buildings occupied a cul-de-sac off Pioneer Trail. Originally built to house the low wage laborers who serviced the tourism industry in South Lake Tahoe, the structures had been there as long as anyone could remember. The apartments were typically inhabited by hotel maids, casino janitors, and welfare recipients. Over time, the tenants had become almost entirely Mexican.

  The Pine Mountain apartment complex was configured in a square, its four rows of units surrounding a large common area. In better days there had been a swimming pool in the common, but it had long been cemented over. Still, the residents liked to gather there; it was a favorite place for children to build snowmen in the winter, and in the warmer months there would be barbeque parties, lively events with mariachi bands, colorful balloons, and piñatas.

  But in the last year, the common area had become the turf of the Diablos Sierra gang. To many, it seemed the gang had sprung from the streets of South Lake Tahoe. Few knew that the dozen cholos had actually been sent from Juarez, El Paso’s notoriously violent sister city. Their mission was to establish control of the drug trade in the communities around Lake Tahoe, and then to expand their presence to Reno, a larger market controlled by a rival Mexican gang.

  Sixteen-year-old Juan Perez looked out from the sliding glass door of his small apartment. A handful of gang members sat at the table in the square, drinking forties and throwing knives at a target they had spray painted on a huge pine tree. The leader of the gang, a man Juan knew only as Rodrigo, flashed his knife and threw a bull’s eye from twenty paces, the silver blade quivering in the bark.

  Juan watched them, knowing he couldn’t be seen from behind the glass. The cholos were never without red bandanas covering their heads, stuffed in their belt loops, or sometimes tied around their upper arms. Within a few minutes, two white teenagers walked into the common. Cash was exchanged, and one of the teenagers shoved something in his pocket. Probably weed, or maybe crank. It didn’t matter to Juan. He never touched the stuff.

  After lunch, Juan went out to the small patio outside his unit to repair a flat tire on his bicycle. His eyes carefully avoided the gangbangers milling around the table in the common. They were behaving as they usually did, flashing signs, their beer bottles prominently displayed. The sun shined warmly, promising a fine day, one that might have been perfect for a gathering. But no residents congregated in the square, save for the men with their bandanas.

  Beyond the roofline of the apartment building, the Sierra Nevada rose five thousand feet, the whitebark pines and red fir standing against a spring sky so blue and clear it seemed magical. Juan had the day off and decided to test himself by seeing how high he could ride into the mountains. He’d patched the tube and was pumping up the tire when he saw a man enter the common.

  The man was slender and of average height, and he wore loose-fitting jeans low on his hips, the way some of the boys did at Juan’s high school. His upper body was huddled in a cotton jacket, his face obscured by a hood. Juan watched him walk toward the gangsters. Though he dressed like a teenager, something about his gait made him seem older.

  From his patio Juan could make out bits of the murmured conversation taking place at the picnic table. He didn’t pay much attention—he assumed it was a drug buy. But then the quiet morning erupted in loud curses and activity. The hooded man held a gun and a badge and shouted at one cholo that he was under arrest. The other gangbangers, except for one, ran off in different directions. A scuffle ensued, but soon the cop had his suspect cuffed and lying on the ground. Rodrigo, the Mero Mero of the Diablos Sierra, stood beside his prone comrade, his brow creased deeply over his black eyes.

  “You know what would happen to you in my town?” he said to the cop. “You would be found headless in the gutter. Dogs would eat your guts.”

  “Yeah? Well this ain’t your town, bean boy, it’s mine,” the man said. His head no longer covered by the hood, Juan could see his grayish, pockmarked face. “Step aside,” he said. “I need to read your amigo his rights.”

  A moment later a tall white man strode into the common. Juan watched him approach the picnic table, thinking the casual bounce to his step seemed somehow incongruous with the situation.

  “Everything under control here?” he said.

  “Yeah. Let’s go.” Pock Face began leading the handcuffed suspect away.

  The tall white man, his eyes protruding from under the mottled flesh on his forehead, pointed two fingers at Rodrigo. “What’s your problem? You look like someone stole your chimichanga.”

  Rodrigo didn’t reply for a long moment. Then he sat on the table and leaned back on his elbows. “No, everything is fine, homes,” he said, his face transformed into that of a man at peace with himself and his world. “I’m just enjoying the beautiful weather.”

  “Let me see your ID.”

  “No problem, man.” He flipped open his wallet and handed a card to the big man with the fish eyes.

  “Are you working, Rodrigo?”

  “No, man, not yet. I’m still looking for a job, see?”

  “You need to find one soon. Otherwise, immigration will put you on a bus and send you back to Mexico.”

  “I don’t think so. My green card means I’m a lawful, permanent resident.”

  Fish Eyes stared off toward the mountains. A hawk glided out of the sky, floating on the current until it was lost in the shadows.

  “That’s an interesting interpretation.” The big cop smiled and joined his partner.

  Juan watched the two policemen escort their prisoner out of the common. At first he was gratified to see the drug dealer arrested, then his stomach roiled with a sense of apprehension and foreboding so severe he had to sit down. He closed his eyes, remembering how his family lived in fear of the local policia. The Mexican officers wielded their power like a club, extorting and raping at will. The manner of the American cops brought the memories flooding back—the callous abuse of authority, the casual destroying of innocent lives, and the hunger for power and money that fueled it all. Juan had been told American police were honest, trustworthy servants of the people. When he looked at the two cops leaving the square, he knew he’d been lied to.

  3

  It was my habit to jog to the local gym and pump iron on Sunday afternoons, but the bumps and bruises I’d suffered the night before were ailing me to the point that exercise was improbable. Instead I headed over to Whiskey Dick’s for a dose of old fashioned pain medication. I’d just finished my second bourbon-seven when my cell rang.

  “Hey, Dirt,” the voice said. My old buddy, Cody Gibbons.

  “I’m heading your direction,” he said. “I’ve got to file some paper work at the state clerk’s office in Carson City. Some bullshit about a tax lien from that job I did in Vegas.”

  “You mean the one when you slept with the mayor’s daughter and ran into his car when you dropped her off?”

  “Yeah, yeah. They’re claiming my insurance was lapsed. It’s all a big misunderstanding.”

  “How, if you don’t mind me asking, did you end up seducing the daughter of Las Vegas’s top public official?”

  “Me seducing her? Christ, it was the other way around. And you make it sound like I defiled some young, innocent schoolgirl. This broad was a thirty-year-old nymphomaniac.”

  “Where are you now?” I said.

  “A few miles outside Sacramento. I should be in South Lake by seven or so. What are you doing for the next few days?”

  “You between jobs?”


  “Something like that.”

  “Call me when you get into town.”

  I shook my head and hit off my drink. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw two men take a seat at the far end of the bar. They both wore T-shirts and baggy shorts hanging to mid-shin, leaving only a narrow strip of exposed skin above their white socks. I swiveled away from them and focused my attention on the TV in the opposite corner of the room.

  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.