Stateline (7 page)

I looked away from Bascom, unable to resist a weird but profound sense that in some dark corner of my psyche, I shared his loss. I shook my head, trying to ignore the random emotion, and glanced over at Cutlip, who was eyeing the whiskey. I stood, poured myself a jolt in a plastic cup, then poured one for Cutlip, but he wouldn’t take it from my hand so I set it in front of him. Bascom held out his cup, and I measured him a shot. The sky was dark outside, and the casino lights reflected into the room.

“You’re asking me to leave my job and undertake a secret investigation without the knowledge of any police agency,” I said.

“I didn’t say ‘secret.’ I want low profile.” Bascom leaned back in his chair. “If the police learn of your involvement, so be it. Your job will be to do what they can’t, or won’t do, if that’s what it takes.”

I tasted the whiskey. A slew of issues and pros and cons jumbled around in my head, and finally I went to the bottom line. My old man had told me years ago to never lead with your chin in a negotiation; get the other party to the name the price first.

“How much are you willing to pay?” I said. My sympathy for John Bascom did not extend to his bank account.

“Name your price,” he shot back. So much for my strategy. I decided to start wildly high—from what I’d heard, he could afford it.

“One hundred thousand up front.”

He didn’t blink. “I’ll give you fifty thousand up front and the remaining fifty K for delivering the killer.”

“Delivering a person constitutes kidnapping, and my bounty hunting license is expired,” I said.

“Get it renewed.”

“It’s not an overnight process.”

“You’re not the right man for the job then. I’ll find someone else.”

I looked at Bascom warily. “You’re asking me to stretch the law,” I said. “But for a hundred K, I’ll deliver your man.”

“Dead or alive,” Bascom said flatly.

“I’m a private investigator, not a hit man. I’ll deliver the killer. You want him dead, that’s your business.”

“Yes. It is,” he said slowly. Then his eyes snapped back on mine, once again addressing me as a subordinate. “I’ll want daily reports,” he said. There was a light knock on the door, and Nora Bascom stuck her head in. “Edward will take care of the paperwork and details,” Bascom said. “I need you to call him with a progress report daily.” He stood without further comment, went to his wife, and left me with Cutlip.

“Give me a minute,” Cutlip said as he typed on a notebook computer. I went over to the window and gazed out at the neon lights of Pistol Pete’s casino. A thirty-foot-tall cowboy was in a fast-draw stance, the sign underneath him boasting, “Loosest slots in Nevada.” The sidewalks were crowded with tourists pouring in and out of the casinos, and the road was a solid line of cars. For a moment I felt strangely removed, like I was down on the street, not here in a room watching the masses from above. It was an odd feeling—fifty grand. More money than I made working for Wenger the year before. I had under five hundred dollars in my checking account at the moment. What the hell would I say to Wenger? He’d probably want in on the deal; I smiled at the thought. I’d have to ask him for vacation time, or maybe a leave of absence. He’d have a shit hemorrhage.

It took fifteen minutes for Cutlip to create the paperwork detailing our arrangement. When I read it I saw a provision for expenses, including travel, meals, and entertainment. That gave me moment for pause—Wenger reimbursed me for nothing. If I wanted to loosen someone’s lips with a few cocktails, I did it on my own dime. I finished reading the contract, signed it, and Edward made me a copy. Then he wrote and handed me a check for $50,000. I looked at him, and his face was impassive. I stared at the Bascom Lumber Enterprises check, carefully folded it, and put it in my wallet.

“You realize if the police make the arrest first, the remaining payment becomes null and void,” he said.

“Right,” I said. And there was the catch. If the cops solved the case quickly, I’d walk away with the fifty thousand, but wouldn’t collect the balance. If they didn’t make an arrest within a week or so, I might have a reasonable shot at the bounty. I wondered what the odds were of my being able to identify the killer before the police. Hell, they could wrap the case up in twenty-four hours.

“Mr. Bascom is a stickler for detail,” Cutlip said. “Make sure you call me every day with an update.” He searched his pockets. “Shoot, I’ve left my cards in my car. Come with me.”

On our way outside, we passed a lounge where the groomsmen and bridesmaids, still in their wedding clothes, had congregated, along with a number of the McGee family members. Jerry and Shelly were there, as well as Mandy, who was wearing a burgundy gown and holding a martini glass in her hand.

We walked through the icy lot to Cutlip’s car, a dark Ford Crown Victoria. He reached in the glove box and handed me his card.

“Gad, it’s cold out here,” he said, rubbing his arms through his suit jacket.

I looked at my watch. “Have you eaten yet?”

“No, but I need to–”

“Come on, let’s go down the road, get a beer and something to eat. You look like you’ve had a long day.”

“No kidding,” he sighed, rubbing his eyes with his palms. “All right, a beer sounds good. Where do you want to go?”

I climbed into his car. “Go out on 50 and hang a right. There’s a good place a couple miles up the road.”

Edward accelerated into the stream of traffic on the highway, heading out of town. I stared through his windshield across the road, out to the dark waters of Lake Tahoe. I had to resist the urge to pull the check out, look at it again, make sure it was real. A financial windfall was the last thing I expected to walk into. Some people were born into their money, others dedicated their lives to chasing it. I fell in neither category. I’d always had just enough to get by, and never much more. Carrying a $50,000 check in my wallet seemed absurd. The money would completely change my financial situation.

But maybe the idea wouldn’t be so hard to get used to. I let my mind wander to what I might spend the dough on, thinking easily, not really concentrating, just indulging myself for a moment or two. Then I added in the additional fifty K and started figuring a little harder. And it was then that I felt the workings of greed seeping in from the corners of my mind. I was surprised at how quickly a small hit of wealth could launch a covetous thought process. It made me feel an odd psychic connection to Wenger, like I was seeing out of his eyes.

A couple of minutes later we pulled into a small bar and grill called Chuck’s Pit. Inside, it was warm and dark, like a cave. We took a seat at the bar, and Edward asked for a bottle of Heineken, which he drained in long swallows. The bar maid took our dinner orders, and Edward ordered another beer and a shot of Patron. He leaned his head back and shot the cognac-like tequila, then sat hunched over the bar on his elbows. He kept shaking his head.

“It’s unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the preparations that went into the wedding. And the impact this has on Bascom Lumber and the Bascom family. It’s monumental. I’m in a state of shock.” His brown hair was parted on the side—it looked like it had been hair sprayed in place, but the wind had messed it up. I noticed one of his front teeth was bigger than the other, which made him look boyish, like a child whose adult teeth were still growing in. But he had to be close to forty.

“How well did you know Sylvester?” I asked.

“Fairly well, I guess. Understand, he’s a lot younger than me. We didn’t socialize outside of work, but he seemed to be pretty typical.”

“Typical? How so?”

“Well, here’s a twenty-seven-year-old son of an extremely wealthy and powerful man. He’s got everything going for him; his career is in place, he’s got a beautiful new fiancée, he’s got enough money to live however he wants. He’s got it made. All he needed to do is go with it and not do anything stupid. I guess that was too much to ask.”

“How do you know he did something stupid?”

“Well, I…” Edward shrugged. “Just an assumption, I guess.”

“Was Sylvester intense and committed to the business, like his dad?”

Edward waved at the bartender, ordered another tequila, and gunned it with a quick flip of the head. I could see him start to unwind as the booze hit him. The lines around his eyes and forehead lightened, and he smiled for no reason. The tension seemed to leave his body like steam rising off wet concrete under a hot sun.

“I don’t usually drink much,” he said. “But this situation…”

“I understand,” I said.

“Let me give you a little Bascom Lumber empire history,” he said, beginning to slur a little. “The original founder was Leland Bascom, who started a small timber business back in the early eighteen hundreds on the East Coast. He built it into a pretty good company, and then in the eighteen-fifties his son, Hamilton, came out west to expand the business during the gold-rush boom days. Hamilton Bascom was very successful in California and extended the company’s timber rights into Oregon. He was known as a ruthless, uncompromising businessman and was shot to death in eighteen-eighty. He’s become kind of a symbol to the Bascoms, representing toughness and tenacity. They like to bring him up in meetings.

“Anyway, after he died, his son William inherited the business, which by now was well established and very profitable. William was a competent executive but had a notorious record of philandering. He died in the nineteen-twenties—had a heart attack while in bed with a prostitute. His son Stephen then became the top executive.” Edward paused, holding up his fingers and counting them off. “And he was in charge until after World War Two, at which time Stephen’s son Samuel returned home from Germany as a decorated war hero. Stephen retired, and Samuel took over. Samuel was at the wedding; he made a speech at the rehearsal dinner. He just turned eighty-two.”

I nodded, and the waitress brought our food and took orders for another round. We ate in silence for a minute, then Edward started again.

“Samuel retired about twenty years ago, and that’s when John Bascom became president—John Bascom is Samuel’s oldest son. I started working for the company ten years ago, right after Seth Bascom was killed. This whole situation kind of seems like déjà vu.”

“How did Seth Bascom get killed?” I asked.

“He was crushed when a cable snapped while loading a trailer with redwoods in Southern Oregon.”

“Ouch. Back to Sylvester, tell me how he compared to his dad.”

Edward sat for a moment, chewing his food while he stared at the bottles behind the bar. “I was getting to that. I never knew Seth Bascom, but from what I hear he was a tough kid, a fighter, stubborn as a mule—very similar to his father. Now, this is just my opinion; I haven’t worked directly with Sylvester very much, I’m sure I would have in the future if he, uh, was still with us. But I got a feeling he was too young, too green, not intense enough. He seemed to spend a lot of time running around house shopping, taking Desiree on exotic vacations, and partying with his friends. I never got the impression he was that interested in the business.”

“Why did John Bascom want to promote him?” I said, thinking that it didn’t sound like Sylvester would have been the right guy to run his father’s business. But that didn’t mean he deserved to die.

“Because he’s his son,” Edward said. “It’s a family business.”

“I see.”

“Think about it,” Edward said, resting his forehead on his fingers as he looked at me. “For every man like John Bascom, there’s a thousand ordinary types that maybe are somewhat ambitious, but don’t view business as life and death. I think Sylvester was smart enough to know he had it good, but as far as him being driven, I never sensed that.”

I considered his remarks while I dosed a taco with Tabasco sauce.

“What about Sylvester’s friends, the guys in his wedding? Do you know them?”

“Not really,” he said. “His best man’s a guy named Chris Dickerson, they went to school together, like back in grade school. The Asian guy is Rod Yamato, he’s another old school buddy. I don’t know the other ones.”

“How about the big guy with the flattop, Sven Osterlund?”

“Oh, the bodybuilder?” Edward shook his head. “I never met him. But listen to this: last Thursday night Sylvester and all his guys are out at the casinos living it up. They end up back in Sylvester’s room at Caesar’s about two or three in the morning and completely wreck the place. I mean, there’s a couple holes in the sheetrock, they were throwing furniture around, the TV gets busted up, there’s food flung all over the place, and this guy Osterlund heaves a table off the balcony into the pool. From what I hear, he was the ringleader and was really going crazy. Anyway, I had to go fix things with the hotel manager—he wanted to kick the whole group out. I finally soothed it over, and Sylvester told me not to tell Mr. Bascom.”

“What did you say?”

“Not much. It kind of put me between a rock and a hard place, you know? I just wrote it off as a boys-will-be-boys thing and let it drop.”

We finished our drinks, and the bartender took our plates and left the check.

“I’ll get it,” I said, the new high roller on the block, ready to give my fresh expense account a workout.

W
hen Edward dropped me off me back at my car, he gave me the room number at the Crown Ambassador where a maid had found Sylvester’s body. I watched Edward walk across Caesar’s parking lot toward the entrance to the casino. He appeared to be a straight shooter, an intelligent guy, a regular guy. But what type of person allows himself to be a personal errand boy for an arrogant, high-powered executive? When John Bascom snapped his fingers, Edward jumped. It seemed to be a demeaning existence, and my impression of Edward was that he had more going for him. Maybe he didn’t mind the work, but something didn’t seem right about it, and I wondered if perhaps his situation was due to some unfortunate circumstance.

I started the Nissan, and the bad muffler rattled like mad. Maybe now that I could afford it, I’d get it fixed. If I had the time. Or made the time. Hell, maybe I’d just get used to the noise and drive the car until the goddamned muffler fell off. I revved the motor a couple times, challenging the racket to outlast my patience. Then I stuck the car in gear and drove across the border into California, to the Crown Ambassador.