Speed Metal Blues: A Dan Reno Novel (32 page)

But it did. He experienced a brief moment of flooding elation. Opening the safe with the torch would have taken at least ten minutes—John had bought a safe and practiced. Severino must have been in the process of moving money. A stroke of luck.

A green plastic bag was crammed into the interior. John pulled it out and quickly checked the contents. Bundles of cash. C-notes, twenties. Well over a hundred grand. Maybe a million. Hard to say. Five hundred grand, at least. More than he had hoped for. More luck. He’d celebrate later, if all went well.

Severino’s body had slid off the chair and lay crumpled on the floor. John dragged it by the arm, hoisted the corpse upright, and lowered it into the cardboard box. Severino settled to the bottom in the fetal position, his sightless eyes staring. The luster of the black marbles no more.

A knock on the door made John jump.

“Vic?” Vic, you in there?” Christ, it was Carlo.

Silent as a cat, John moved to the doorway. Carlo would have a key. If the door opened, John would have no choice but to shoot him.

Five seconds, John’s heart thumping like his son’s bass drums, sweat stinging his eyes. Then an envelope slid beneath the door, and John heard Carlo’s footfalls, and then silence.

John exhaled and put the .22 back in his pocket. He dropped the money and the torch in the box, on top of the body. Then he sealed the box with tape, pushed the swivel chair neatly under the desk, closed the safe, and made sure the framed poster was straight.

Sixty seconds. Sixty more lucky seconds was what he needed. He turned the lights off and eased the door open, then pushed the dolly out into the hall. Empty. Twenty feet of brightly lit hallway to the exit. Like swimming in mud.

But no one came, and the parking lot was dark, welcoming dark, and he curled his fingers under the box and effortlessly lifted it into his trunk. It wasn’t until later he marveled at how easy it was. Close to two hundred pounds, like it was nothing.

Irish John pulled away from Pistol Pete’s Casino for the last time, the cool lake air blowing in his open windows. He felt outside himself, as if in a different time and place. His life, Robert’s life, at stake. He’d done what he had to do, but it seemed surreal. So far, everything had gone like clockwork, so maybe he could pull it off. But he wasn’t done yet.

Ten minutes later he parked at the marina out on the keys and wheeled the box over fifty yards of tire-lined planks to a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser he’d rented. He stepped onto the boat and dropped an aluminum ramp from the gangway to the dock. Then he pulled the box aboard and eased out of the harbor. Except for the Tahoe Queen, visible miles to the north, there wasn’t another vessel on the water.

Heading for the middle of the lake, John listened to the deep hum of the motor and the water slapping rhythmically against the hull. This was the home stretch. Soon all the evidence would be gone, buried forever in the depths of Lake Tahoe.

If Irish John the Hammer felt a tinge of regret, it was for Sal Tuma, a man who had been there when John was desperate. Tuma would probably be stunned John betrayed him. A funny thing, the Mafia. All based on loyalty and a blood oath of silence. Allegiances sworn for life. But for what? The right to not work a steady job, to not earn an honest living. The right to steal, rob, cheat, and kill. All in the name of supporting your family. Nothing more important than family.

But in the end, it was always every man for himself. The list of traitors in recent years could fill a book. Thirty years in a federal pen, or testify and get witness protection. More and more were choosing the latter. Every mobster knew eventually it would come down to this, if they lived long enough.

John had quit the mob because he knew all the professed loyalty in the world meant nothing if he were dead or imprisoned. He had forged his own way, legitimately. Until fate stepped up and drew him back in. No denying fate. His actions today were his destiny, irrevocable and inevitable. He stared out over the bow, unblinking, his hands gripping the wheel. His life was the culmination of all he had done, and there was no escaping his past.

Thirty minutes out John shut off the throttles. The boat rocked gently in the swell, the lake like black ink. John dumped Severino’s limp body from the box and shoved it into a steel drum he’d bought a hundred miles away, at a yard in Sacramento. Guaranteed rust-free for thirty years. He dropped three thirty-five-pound steel plates on top of the body, then cut up the box and wedged the pieces in. Next, his coveralls, hat, and gloves. And the torch cutter, unused. Finally, he pounded the lid on and clamped it shut with vice grips. Lights twinkled on the distant shorelines. He looked back the way he’d come and saw the glitter of the casinos in Stateline rising above the black expanse.

He pushed the drum to the edge of the cruiser, and it took everything he had to tip it over the gunwale. It teetered for an instant, then fell into the water with a brief splash and vanished. John had read Lake Tahoe was one of the deepest lakes in the world.

Clutching the dark plastic bag full of cash, he started the motor and began back toward the south shore. After a minute he slowed, disassembled his pistol, and tossed the pieces in the water. That should be the last of it, he thought. No one would miss him or Vic Severino until the morning. By that time he and Robert would be on a plane under assumed names, heading for Europe to start anew. The Tumas and the police would be left grasping at thin air.

“M
aybe they’re still moving,” I said, pulling a clean shirt over my head.

“No, she said it wouldn’t take long, and she always takes my calls.” Cody paced back and forth in my family room, his phone clenched in his fist.

“I’ll try Juan’s number,” I said, flicking open my cell. It went to voice mail.

“Put your shoes on and let’s go,” Cody said.

“To the apartments?”

“Yeah. And if she’s not there, we can try her new pad. She gave me the address.”

“Sure you’re not being paranoid?”

“With Loohan spotted there yesterday? Come on, we’re wasting time. I’m low on gas, let’s take your rig.”

In two minutes we were hitting it down the street, Cody leaning forward in the passenger seat like a bent spring, his lips a tight, colorless line.

“Step on it,” he said. I hit the gas around a corner, the tires howling as they fought for traction. We turned onto 50 and sped through a couple greens and then blew a red before turning off and careening down a series of side streets. I almost ran over a cat, then power slid through a corner and bounced to a stop in front of the Pine Mountain complex. Cody was out the door before the springs stopped rocking. I followed him, my Beretta tucked in the back of my jeans.

We knocked on the front door of the Perez’s apartment, and when nobody answered, we jogged around and into the common, to their back patio. The screen was shut, but the sliding glass door was open. Inside it was dark, and when Cody slid open the screen, I could see the furniture was gone.

“Teresa!” Cody yelled, walking inside.

It took us five seconds to see nobody was home and the unit was vacant.

“Let’s see if her pickup is here,” I said. When we walked out to the parking stalls, I saw the small, rust-colored truck in a covered spot.

I put my hand on the hood. “Still hot.”

Cody reached in an open window and picked up a cell phone from the seat. He held it in his palm, and I could see his ears turning red, the way they did when he was either under intense pressure, or on the verge of losing his temper.

“No wonder she hasn’t returned my calls.”

We walked to the end of the row and turned the corner to a back street that was seldom used. A U-Haul truck was parked at the curb. Cody opened the door to the cab. The keys lay on the seat.

“What the hell?” he said. I went around to the rear and pushed up the unlocked gate. It was empty.

We circled the truck, staring up and down a street bordered by stucco walls on one side and an open field on the other.

“Shit. Try Juan’s cell again, would you?”

I did, with no success. As I hung up, a young woman came from the alley, pushing a baby stroller. Behind her an elderly Mexican couple shuffled along.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said. “We’re supposed to meet Teresa Perez. Have you seen her by any chance?”

“Who are you?” She looked at us beneath thick eyelashes, seeing two white men she had no reason to trust.

Cody bent down, bringing his eye level to hers. “We’re her friends, ma’am. We think she may be in trouble. If you’ve seen her, please tell me. We’re here to protect her from someone we think wants to hurt her.”

After a long moment, she shrugged. “I saw her about half an hour ago. She was sitting in a purple car. I waved, but I think she might have been asleep.”

“A purple car?”

“Yes, parked right here.”

“What kind of car?”

“It was the car your president was assassinated in,” said the old man, stepping forward with a glint in his eye. “Before you were born. But I remember.”

“Which president?” I said, but before he could respond, I knew the answer.

“Kennedy. In a Lincoln Continental with suicide doors.”

Cody and I locked eyes. “Luther Conway,” we said simultaneously.

• • •

We barreled over Spooner Pass toward Carson, Cody driving like a fiend, while I tried to reach DeHart at Carson City PD. I left a message, asking that they send units to Luther Conway’s house to investigate a potential kidnapping. Then I called Marcus Grier, who said he’d put out an APB for Conway.

“We can’t help Teresa if we wreck,” I said, bracing myself as Cody pushed my truck through a downhill corner at almost double the speed limit.

“You think Loohan is with Conway?” he said. His straw-colored hair was damp with sweat and pulled back from his forehead, his eyebrows knotted in a V.

“I think we’re going to find out.”

“If they’ve laid a hand on her, I’ll kill them both.”

“Easy now,” I said, the words foolish as soon as they left my mouth. Like telling a stampeding herd of buffalo to slow down.

I assembled my gear as we drove: body armor, stun baton, pistol loaded, extra clip, my sawed-off shotgun, a dozen shells. When we reached Carson City, we switched seats at a stop light so Cody could gear up.

Thirty minutes from when we left Teresa’s apartments, we parked a few houses down from Luther Conway’s Victorian-style home. There was no sign of Carson City PD. The sun was going down, dusk settling over the high-desert valley. The sky was laced with orange and pink streaks along the distant ridges.

The purple Lincoln we’d seen when we were last here was not in the driveway or on the street. I eyed the detached garage at the end of the driveway.

“Garage first, then house,” I said.

We moved silently toward the garage, a flat-roofed structure almost wide enough for three cars. The roll-up door was closed. Next to it was a side door, one that looked less than stout.

I rattled the handle of the door. Locked.

“Kick it in,” Cody said, shotgun pointing at the lock.

Beretta in hand, I reared back my leg and slammed my heel into the jamb, which gave way in a burst of splinters. I jumped into the garage, finger poised on the trigger, Cody following with the twelve-gauge. The interior was lit by dim red lights. There were no vehicles, just a bed and a desk on the far side.

On the bed sat a teenage boy, 150 pounds of lanky bones, his face hidden by a hairstyle as long in the front as the back. With a flip of his head, he shook his hair from his eyes, and stared at us with his best bad boy expression.

“Whoever you are, get out,” he said.

“Where’s Luther?” Cody crossed the room in long strides.

“Who knows? He doesn’t share his schedule with me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Cody grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the wall. I watched Cody’s thumb seek out the nerve below the chin. The kid gasped and struggled.

“Hail Satan,” he cried.

“You think you’re tough, huh?” I said. “Is Luther with Jason Loohan?”

A few straggled sounds, then Cody moved his thumb off the nerve, dropped the kid onto the bed, and grabbed his wrist. He held it at an angle that forced the kid’s shoulder to twist awkwardly.

“You’re gonna answer our questions, or I’m gonna cause you agony you won’t believe.”

Tolerating pain can be learned, to a degree. Survivalists and cage fighters develop the ability to endure extreme discomfort for limited lengths of time. But for the uninitiated, relatively small doses causes complete mental shutdown. The brain can only focus on one thing: make the pain go away.

“Stop it, stop!” the boy screamed.

“Where are they?” Cody snarled.

“You’re going to break it!”

“Where are they?”

“I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you! Luther and Loohan have a virgin for a black mass!”

“Where?” Cody barked.

“I’ll show you,” the boy whimpered. “Just please let go.”

• • •

The minutes ticked by as we bombed back over Spooner Pass toward the lake, Cody at the wheel, the kid between us in the cab. Jesus Christ, somebody’s son. Maybe the product of bad parents, or maybe just a bad seed. One thing I noticed, his teeth were straight and white. Likely had braces and regular cleanings. He also wore a pair of black designer skate shoes, the expensive kind. Could have got them anywhere, I suppose, but I didn’t think this punk was a tough-luck case from the streets. More likely a failed product of middle class suburbia.

“When we get there, you’re gonna do exactly as we say,” I said. “You mess up, I will personally break your bones.” He tried to look away, but I grabbed his hair and made him look in my eyes. “Whatever is going on in your pea brain, make sure you remember what I just said.”

He swallowed and nodded. Cody screeched around the final sweeping corner leading to Lake Tahoe and floored the gas. We drove in silence, hitting close to a hundred on the straight sections along the lake, until we turned left on Kingsbury Grade. About a mile up the winding road, the kid said, “Turn here.”

It was a paved street, probably private, built to access a few old cabins we passed. The road narrowed to a single lane, then turned to dirt. We followed it around a steep bend onto a long straight above a deep gorge, the dirt crumbling beneath my tires. The road turned away from the gorge and into the forest. The last of the twilight was fading fast when we reached a small turnaround.