Page 5

CHAPTER FOUR

September 13, 1996

Very late

F ortunately, I always carried a couple of hundred-dollar bills in the ‘secret’ compartment of my wallet. It’s not that I was walking through life expecting to be quasi-kidnapped by a teenager; it’s more that I knew bad things happened and that bad things generally required cash.

Once we got out of the terminal, I was hit by the frigid air, clearly under fifty degrees. I was wearing a pair of 501s, Vans and a thin red turtleneck Ronnie had picked out. I usually left a jacket in my Jeep, but Ronnie had cleaned everything out when it went to the body shop to be fixed. Not many of my things had worked their way back in.

Unlike LAX and other big city airports, there were not a lot of cabs waiting for us. In fact there were none. I walked down to a recent model minivan that had its windows open and was sitting there idling. The main clue that it might be for hire was that it was illegally parked.

I leaned in and asked “Are you looking for a fare?”

The guy inside was in his twenties, ill-kept, and scrawny. He was trying to hide a joint in one hand, but the smell of the vehicle gave him away.

“Oh yeah, man. You wanna go someplace?”

I glanced around the airport and if there’d been another option I would have taken it. Instead, I pulled out my wallet. Snagged a hundred-dollar bill from the ‘secret’ compartment and held it up so the guy could see it.

“You busy for the next two hours?”

“I am now.”

Cass and I climbed into the backseat. He’d been trying to hand me a bag with aspirin since I’d hung up the phone. I was unhappy about the call and distracted so I hadn’t really noticed. I did now. As I opened the bag I said to the driver, “First we want to go to Hobart’s. You know it?”

As he pulled away from the curb he said, “Yeah. Why you wanna go there, man? It’s a pretty sleazy place.”

“I guess it hasn’t changed much then.”

“Oh yeah, you been before?”

“Yeah. I’ve been here before.”

He shrugged. “You know what you’re doing.”

“We won’t be there long.” I’d gotten a couple of Bayer aspirins out of the metal travel box and popped them in my mouth. I chewed them up and swallowed them. Disgusting, but that’s how much my shoulder hurt.

“So where you from?” our driver asked.

“Out of town,” I said with as much finality as I could muster.

“Oh right… yeah… I’ll just…” He reached over and turned on the radio. The “Macarena” was playing, which was annoying. At that particular moment it seemed to be playing everywhere.

I looked over at Cass. He was staring out the window as the airport slipped away. He was forlorn, as they say. I had to be honest with myself. It wasn’t likely we’d find Gavin, and if we did find him there was no guarantee he’d remember where he got Dom Reilly’s important papers. But the best way to get this forlorn kid to give up would be going on a wild goose chase.

Our driver was singing along to the “Macarena” except he didn’t know the words. It was working my nerves, so I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Spencer.”

“Thanks for driving us Spencer. So you seem like a guy who might be connected. You mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“There aren’t any legal brothels in Reno. Everyone comes here thinking there are, but you have to go out into the boonies. You might find some girls working Hobarts, but they’re not legal so you have to be careful.”

“Thanks. You hear much about where I could get a fake ID?” I asked.

“For your…” He didn’t know what Cass was to me so he stopped. “Um, there’s a bartender named Philly at Hobart’s, he might know.”

“Do you know where I can get a gun?” Cass asked.

“Don’t answer that,” I said. “It’s a joke.”

I stared at Cass during an awkward pause, which was eventually broken by Spencer. “What hotel you staying at? Cause I know people at Circus Circus, you’d like it there. I could maybe get you a discount.”

“Thanks Spencer, we’ll keep that in mind.”

The idea of checking into a hotel and going to sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. The kid wanted a gun. I had to figure out how to dissuade him from killing another human being while at the same time figuring out who that human being might be.

Hobart’s Casino sat in the middle of a large parking lot. There was a half-hearted attempt at a mining theme on the outside with a pick axe and a gold pan above the automatic sliding doors at the front.

“So if you’ll just wait here, Spencer, I won’t be long.” I began to slide the door open but noticed that Cass was scooting over to come with me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“You’re not old enough to be in a casino.”

In the front seat, Spencer nodded, as though he’d just gotten the answer to why I might want a fake ID.

“I’ve been in casinos before.”

I knew they might not have a problem with his being there as long as he didn’t try to gamble, but I wanted him to stay in the parking lot. Particularly if he was going to ask more people where to get a gun or otherwise plan a murder.

“Yeah, I don’t need you getting me thrown out in the middle of a conversation. I’ll be back in ten minutes.” Then I shut the van door in his face.

His surprised and angry look amused me as I turned around and walked into the casino. I was immediately hit by a wall of cigarette smoke. I’d quit years ago, and while I sometimes missed it, it had grown disgusting. I knew if I went back to it now it would take several packs until I could get to the point of enjoying it again. It was no longer tempting.

The carpet was red and gold with bucking horses trying to throw cowboys off. Along one side of the large space there were banks of slot machines. Down the center were the tables, a whole section was roped off due to the time of night. A couple were actually full though. They had one dollar blackjack, which looked to be as popular as it was in Las Vegas. On the far side of the room, there was a long oval shaped bar with video poker machines set into it every few feet.

I walked over to the bar and got the attention of a barmaid who was dressed in a red uniform that matched the carpet and might have been ‘Western’ if they’d had miniskirts in the Wild West.

“Hi. I’m looking for a guy named Gavin.”

She shrugged.

“What about a bartender named Philly?”

“He’s the bald guy at the other end of the bar,” she said, then sipped from a glass of what looked like Coke but was probably rum and Coke.

I nodded and walked down the long bar. She was right, he was pretty bald, though he stubbornly combed a couple of extra-long strands of hair from the sides over the top. He was smoking a cigarette, which went a long way to explain his gray skin and broken capillaries.

“I’m looking for Gavin,” I said, without introduction.

“Who are you?”

“Former client.”

He looked me up and down, then said, “He’s not doing returns. He’s in prison last I heard.”

“Why’s he in prison?”

“If you’re a former client then you know why.”

I nodded. Forgery. It was one of those crimes that might have sent him to prison for a short time or a very long time—depending on how many times they could prove it. I had no way of knowing how long his sentence had been. It was possible he might be out already. It wouldn’t be surprising if he decided not to jump back into his former profession.

“You don’t happen to know which prison?”

“We’re not pen pals.”

“Sure. I went to his place once. It was a single-wide but it wasn’t in a park. You know where that might be?”

“Sun Valley, maybe. 5th Avenue. 6th.”

“You know if anyone took over his business?”

“Someone probably did, but they don’t come in here.”

Which made me wonder if the casino had something to do with his getting busted. That had nothing to do with me so I let it go.

“Thanks for answering my questions,” I said. I dropped a twenty on the bar and walked out of the casino.

Back in the minivan, Cass was pissed off and surly. “What did you find out?”

“We’re going down to Sun Valley. I’m looking for a single wide on 5th or 6th.”

“Okay,” Spencer said doubtfully. “There’s probably more than one.”

“I’ve been there before. I’m hoping I recognize it when I see it.”

Spencer started the van and pulled out of the casino’s parking lot.

“So he wasn’t in there?” Cass asked.

“The bartender said he’s in prison, but he doesn’t know which one. He might be out or there might be someone at his place who knows.”

“So we’re not going to find out what we need to know tonight?”

“No. I don’t think we are.”

The thing was, I felt like we had figured it out. He admitted that his mother might have brought him to Reno after his father disappeared. In my mind, the might part of that sentence had already evaporated. His mother had brought him out to Reno while she sold his father’s papers to Gavin, and then gambled the money away. Or she might have won. It didn’t matter if she walked away with most of the money or not. The point was, she sold her husband’s important papers. She knew he wasn’t coming back. She knew he was dead. And she probably knew who killed him. That is, if she didn’t do it herself.

It took less than ten minutes to get to the Sun Valley area. We pulled into the neighborhood. I looked for something familiar but didn’t see it. I tried to think of the color the trailer had been. Nothing came to mind. That told me something though. It wasn’t an unusual or remarkable color. I would have remembered orange, red, bright blue, bright yellow—bright anything. Pink, lime green, black. That left gray, light yellow, light blue, white, beige. All the super bland colors. All the colors trailers actually were.

We drove up and down 5th and 6th Avenues twice. I was already beginning to think about what we should do next as we passed a white single-wide with gray shutters.

“Slow down,” I said.

The chain-link fence was familiar, but then a lot of the homes on this street hand them. On one side of the yard there was a twenty-year-old Plymouth Duster sitting on blocks. It was army green. It had still been in use when I’d been there before. I remembered it because I’d owned a Plymouth Duster once. Mine had been baby blue.

“This is it.”

Spencer came to a complete stop. There was a light on in what looked like the living room. Before I’d thought much about it, I jumped out of the van. I shut the door, but before I’d gotten all the way up the driveway the door opened and Cass was twenty feet behind me. I stopped.

“Go back to the van.”

“Fuck you. This is about my father. I’m coming.”

“I don’t know if this is about anything, but I’d rather you stayed in the van.”

“I’m the one in charge here.”

I immediately regretted the comment I’d made earlier about blackmail and kidnapping. If I were being blackmailed or kidnapped, and it certainly felt like I was, then he was in charge and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.

The door to the trailer opened behind me. I turned and there was a woman of about thirty looking at us through a screen door. She said, “I have a gun.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “You’re not going to need it. We’re not going to hurt you. I want to ask if you remember a guy named Gavin.”

“Gavin was my dad.”

“Was?”

“He died last year.”

“In prison?”

She shook her head. “He had cancer so they let him out early. Mostly so they didn’t have to pay for it. Did you know my dad?”

“Yeah, I met him a couple times. I came here once.”

“You’re not a friend then. So what do you want?”

“I wanted to talk to your dad about a woman who came to see him. It would have been sometime between eighty-three and eighty-six. Were you living here then?”

“Yeah, but I don’t remember. I mean, most of the people who came around were teenagers or scary looking guys.”

Cass chipped in, “She had long black hair then. Really pretty.”

“She might have had a kid with her. Five, six… seven.”

It was hard to see through the screen, but she might have been thinking it over. Finally she asked, “Purple leather coat?”

“Yeah, she has a purple coat,” Cass said. His voice was flat, lifeless.

“I wanted that coat. My dad said he’d buy me one cause he was going to make a lot of money off her. But then he never did.”

I could hear three decades of disappointment in that last sentence. Gavin probably did make a lot of money off Joanne Di Stefano. I paid five thousand. He likely paid her one, two at the most. I glanced at Cass. I had the feeling this was bad. He’d just gotten confirmation that his mother sold his father’s identity, meaning she knew he was dead and might have, probably had, something to do with his death.

I thanked Gavin’s daughter, who’d never given us her name, and walked down to the minivan with Cass. Once we were in the van, Spencer asked, “Where to now?”

I had no idea.