What Happens in Reno (7 page)

There were about a dozen coming and going, mostly men who seemed like variations of Hunter: shaved heads, skin covered in ornate professional tattoos as well as crude prison markings of tears and iron crosses and swastikas. Most were heavily muscled and were either shirtless or wearing tank tops like Hunter. There were two blonde-haired young boys, one about 10 and one maybe 14, who Hunter said were his sons.

Some of the older men were his nephews or his cousins, several he just described as “family associates.” All of them called him Uncle. Most of the men greeted Tanner warmly in a whoever-is-a-friend-of-Uncle-is-a-friend-of-mine kind of way. Tanner felt accepted.

One man, maybe a couple years older and about 40 pounds heavier than Tanner, wasn’t so welcoming. His name was Clete, and he didn’t offer his fist to pound to show respect the way the other men did. Just looked Tanner up and down and walked away.

Also wandering the grounds were several hard-looking women of varying ages. Hunter didn’t introduce him to any of the women except for one girl, who he called his favorite niece. She was a wild-looking beauty with black eyes and spiky orange hair named Bianca. Tanner didn’t smile at Bianca, and Bianca didn’t smile back.

“I can use a guy like you,” Hunter said. “I can offer you a life, a purpose, and a way to make some money.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Remember Clete, that rude sonofabitch you met earlier?”

“Yes?”

“I need you to fight him.”

Tanner couldn’t believe this.

“Do you think you can do that?

“I’d love to.”

“Ha! That’s what I thought.”

“Cool.”

“After you win, don’t let up on him until I say, okay? I may decide to have you go all the way.”

“You mean kill him?”

“You’d be okay with that?”

“I’ll do whatever you want me to, Uncle.”

“All right, then. Let’s go.”

A few minutes later, Tanner stood in a vacant spot of land next to the clubhouse. It was all dirt and rocks. Hunter stood beside him, and they were surrounded by the people he’d met earlier. Clete walked up to within about five feet of Tanner. He smirked and took off his shirt. He was heavily muscled, but, like Tanner, he had no tattoos. He did have one long ugly red scar that ran from the bottom of his left ear to his navel. He was wearing green army fatigues and black parachute boots.

“Is this the best you can come up with?” Clete said, pointing at Tanner. “This scawny ass piece of shit?”

Tanner wore his usual outfit of blue jeans, t-shirt, and skate shoes. He took off his shirt to reveal what he knew was a lean and yes, scrawny, frame. He knew he wasn’t impressive. At all. But he wasn’t afraid, just excited. He felt completely alive, completely focused. Happy.

Tanner looked at Hunter. Hunter Manning ignored Clete and looked at Tanner and nodded.

Tanner was at Clete in two quick strides. He hooked his left foot behind his opponent’s right ankle. Pulled his foot up at the same time he brought the back of his left fist down onto Clete’s face. Clete went down, hard. The back of his head made an awful sound as it struck a rock in the dirt.

As usual in a fight, Tanner had no idea how he always knew exactly what to do—he just did it, and whatever he did was right. Once Clete was sprawled on his back, Tanner kicked him twice in the balls and then jumped on top of him. He pinned the man by placing his knees on his chest. He punched him twice in the face and then grabbed him by both ears with both hands and pounded his skull into the rock.

Not even a minute had passed. He could hear appreciative murmurs from the crowd. He looked up and saw Bianca. She didn’t smile.

Clete was nearly unconscious. There was no way he was fighting back. Hunter walked over and made eye contact with Tanner. Hunter’s eyes were shining and damp and Tanner felt love and a new kind of happiness. He still gripped Clete’s ears.

“Finish it, Nephew.”

Tanner clutched Clete’s jaw with his right hand and the back of his head with his left. To his surprise, he knew exactly how to twist the man’s head so his neck would break. As he stood up, he didn’t bother to look down at Clete again. He knew the man was dead, and he was no longer of any concern to Tanner.

Later, he asked Hunter what was the reason for the fight with Clete.

“You don’t need to know all the details, nephew. It’ll just bog you down. You let me worry about that shit.”

B
y 11
P.M.
, Lydia was pretty sure Matt had left town with the money.

He didn’t come home. His phone was obviously turned off. She went to all of the bars she thought he liked and didn’t see him or his car anywhere. The loser didn’t
have
any friends. With his mother dead, Lydia didn’t even know if he had any family anywhere close. It had actually never come up in conversation. Weird.

Ex-coworkers?
Right
. When they met, he wore a very nice suit and talked about his job as a “financial planner.” Always running off to client meetings and what he called strategy sessions, he seemed like a real go-getter.

Later, after they married and he stopped working and she realized that he never made
any
money, she investigated his former employer. It turned out the company’s name only
sounded
like a famous Wall Street investment bank. Matt actually shilled for a multi-level-marketing scheme that charged its recruits $200 for the privilege of urging other people to join the company and … pay $200, etc. There actually was a legitimate insurance product, but Matt never sold any of those. Never attracted any recruits, either.

Stupid her, she saw the suit and heard the job title and assumed he was college educated with an MBA or something. Took her a while to get it out of him, but he finally admitted that his only education past high school was a semester at Modesto Junior College in which he earned all F’s.

Matt said he lived with his mother in that dump out on Rumble on a temporary basis because she was dying and needed his care and help. Part of that was true, at least. The bitch did have cancer and was near death, and Matt seemed to really love her, but he didn’t give her much care—she had County Hospice for that. She thought that nice old Mercedes was his, but it turned out it was the mother’s. He drove it because he didn’t have a car of his own. He did help her spend her social security checks. In fact, she was certain that he kept cashing those checks for months after she died to finance his drinking and gambling. He didn’t even hide that he was selling off anything of value in the house on eBay and Craigslist. She figured that’s how he paid for the suit.

“Hey,” he had said, “It’s all going to be mine anyway, I may as well get whatever I can out of it now before it gets all tied up in legal shit. She’s so hopped up on morphine now she can’t appreciate any of it anyway.”

Matt was vague about
everything
and changed his stories
all
the time. As far as Lydia could tell, he’d been living with his mother since his crazy ex-wife Jennifer Marlin kicked him out eight years earlier.

Lydia and Matt married at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Still in her Matt-induced fog, she paid for it all because he said he was having “cash-flow” issues with some of his investments. They were there four days. The first two days were fun, and, yes, they did get married by an Elvis impersonator—the video was a big hit at parties—and they spent a lot of great time in bed.

Then, on the third day, Matt started drinking. Well, he
always
drank, but up until then, he was very controlled, just like anyone else. Nothing like Ralph Tilley, or some of her boyfriends in the past. But at this point, he stopped faking. They were playing the slots at the Mirage at around noon, and all of a sudden, he was gone. Worried something happened to him, she was about to call the police when he came into the room at 2
A.M.
, sat in a chair, and peed and shit all over himself before passing out.

In the morning, when he got up, she was packed and ready to end the marriage. No more drunks for her. Somehow, he talked her out of it, but she never did feel as close to him after that. She did try, though, she really did.

That afternoon, he won more than three grand at a progressive slot machine. When they got back, he quit his fake job because he said he “needed to deal with his mother’s death and think about how best to utilize his skills in the investment marketplace,” conveniently forgetting he didn’t have any skills. The money disappeared in a couple of weeks, and after that, they remained a one-income family.

So, it was very bad news that Matt was on the loose with the money. She really should have known better. Should have gone with him to the closing and then to the bank. If she hadn’t been so stressed out over Hunter Manning and so obsessed with her operation, she would have handled things very differently. Shit. Shit. Shit.

She knew that Matt was at one of the local Indian casinos. Or Reno, or Vegas. Those were definitely the only choices. Knowing this was true and knowing Matt, the longer he was gone the less chance there was of the money lasting. She had to find him and stop him as soon as possible.

Seeing no alternative, she called Hunter Manning.

“Look, man,” she said. “Matt must have cashed that check and left with all the money.”

“I’ll be right over,” Hunter said.

He arrived with Tanner.

“I expect you to become quite an asset to my family, young man,” she heard Hunter say as they walked in the door.

What did
that
mean? “Quite an ’asset’?” Family? Oh god.

Then again, maybe this was good. Tanner had needed a father figure since, like, forever. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him. He sure looked happy as fuck. The kid was
beaming
.

When he saw Lydia sitting on the couch in the front room, Hunter said, “Please leave me alone with your mother for a minute.”

Tanner looked at Lydia. Hunter put his hand up for a high five. They slapped. Tanner went to his room.

“I saw the dude go to the AM/PM after the bank,” Hunter said. He sat in the easy chair opposite Lydia. “I figured he just needed gas and some beers. When he left, I stopped paying attention.”

“His phone is turned off, and I can’t find him anywhere,” Lydia said.

“Where’s your computer?”

“Over there,” she pointed to a little desk between the dining room and kitchen.

Hunter stood up.

“Show me the bank account. I’ll need to know your ID and your password, both.”

“Are you kidding?”

Hunter looked at Lydia. Raised his eyebrows. Lydia took him over to the desk. She sat down and turned on her internet browser. Hunter stood behind Lydia and watched. She went to her favorites and found her bank.

“My ID is Lydia72.” She typed it in and pressed enter. “And my password is legalslut69.”

She typed in her password and pressed enter. Her checking account appeared.

“Lydia72 and legalslut69,” Hunter said.

“Correct.”

“Click on checking, let me see the balance and recent transactions.”

“See. There’s my payroll check from two days ago. And there’s Matt using his debit card at Denny’s at some point early this morning. Whatever he ate, he vomited all over his clothes. Anyway, no twelve thousand six hundred dollars.”

“Is your husband really that big of an asshole?”

“No shit he’d pull would surprise me anymore.”

“How do I know you don’t have the money? Or know where fuckwad is and are keeping him away so I don’t get my loan?”

“I don’t see how. Clearly, the money was never deposited in the bank. And you saw him go there after the closing. He had to have cashed it. How could I have it? Dude, this is serious. He’s at the Chicken Ranch, Jackson Rancheria, Blackoak, or Reno, or Vegas. And if we don’t find him quick, that money is going to be so gone. The guy is a total loser.”

Hunter looked Lydia in the eyes. She could tell he was trying to decide whether or not he believed her story. He nodded and took his cell phone out of his pocket.

“I need a picture,” he said.

Lydia looked in her phone for an image of Matt. She finally found a good one. From his mother’s memorial service. He and Lydia were the only people there except for the hired minister from Grace Lutheran.

Hunter had a friend who worked as a dealer at Blackoak. He sent the man the picture of Matt. He called his “cousin Johnny” and sent him the photo as well and told him to go Jackson Rancheria to look for Matt. He contacted somebody named Fuckhead Roy and sent him to the Chicken Ranch.

“Now what?” Lydia said.

“Let’s just wait a while and keep monitoring that bank account,” Hunter said. He looked at Lydia. “I can think of an activity to keep you occupied in the meantime.”

Oh, god.

“Do we have to do it in front of Tanner?”

Hunter laughed.

“Don’t bullshit me, you fucking slut. I know that never stopped you before.”

“I just mean can we go into the bedroom?”

Lydia reached back and grabbed Hunter’s dick.

“And can I please give you head this time? Pretty please?”

“Darling, you can do whatever you want.”

T
hat day had been the best ever for Tanner.

In the afternoon, Hunter called him to the compound. Took him alone to the clubhouse and had him sit at the card table. Grabbed a pistol out of one of the cabinets and placed it in front of Tanner.

“Do you know what that is?”

Tanner studied the gun. It was a revolver, he knew that. He thought it was beautiful. Black rubber grip, shiny stainless steel, short barrel.

“Is it a Smith & Wesson snub nose?”

“No.”

“But Uncle, it says Smith and Wesson right on the short barr—”

“That doesn’t mean shit.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. Look at it again. What is it?”

“A gun?”

“No, dumbass, try again.”

Tanner studied the gun. “Can I pick it up?”

“Go ahead.”

Tanner picked it up. He’d never held a gun before. He put his hand around the grip and put his index finger on the trigger. Power flowed from the gun up his arm and into his chest.