“See ya,” I said to O’Roarke, dropping a few extra dollars on the bar, relinquishing my grip on the remote.
O’Roarke jerked a thumb at the TV, at clips of Jonnie and Dave and a voice-over by Ginger Haley droning on, speculating furiously, trying desperately to keep it all fresh and alive. “Find those two,” he said. “Make a big name for yourself.”
“Hah.”
He sucked his teeth, grinning mischievously. “Then do it for Dallas, Great Gumshoe.”
“Double hah.”
I drained the last of the beer and headed for the door.
* * *
Great Gumshoe, hell. I was starting to wish I hadn’t told him about the change of jobs. I’d made the mistake earlier of telling him about my upcoming career change and of course he’d laughed at what was nothing less than my one-and-only future, the jerk, which didn’t surprise me in the least—O’Roarke and I go way back. I would’ve done the same for him if he’d told me he was going to raise llamas or start designing women’s dresses.
I went out the Virginia Street exit into a muggy July night. This is desert, but half a dozen times a year Reno confuses itself with New Orleans or Miami. At 11:06 p.m. the sky was overcast, clouds tinged muddy orange by the city’s lights, temperature in the eighties. Heat lightning flickering in the mountains to the east. Despite the humidity, the night had a pleasant muzzy whirl to it—about six beers’ worth. Or eight. I’d lost count. Didn’t matter.
I was about to walk up north toward my home in the hills, not far from the university, when something caught my eye, or a lack of something—darkness, a hole, an emptiness punched like someone’s fist through the garish casino glare. Maybe it was the Sjorgen thing, the constant media pressure, but I found myself staring at the three-story Victorian mansion across Virginia Street known locally as Sjorgen House—or Woolley House, depending on how one viewed its ownership, legally or historically.
The place had been one of Reno’s finest in 1898, about the time of the Spanish-American war. It had become an island in the midst of Reno’s unbridled growth, an anachronism overrun by neon, protected by the local historical society, squatting darkly amid shaggy elms beneath the Golden Goose’s eerie green bulk. But for a lone yellow light in an attic window, the house was dark. Edna Woolley had lived in the place for forty years, but the house still belonged to Jonnie.
I turned away. Sjorgen’s name came up a lot in Reno. It was something you got used to. Mayor Jonnie owned all or part of half a dozen businesses and three or four rental properties in the city.
Having left the wailing Tercel at home in the garage, I began the half-mile trek home, not entirely steady on my feet. Jonnie was still floating around in my mind—just what I didn’t want or need, but there it was. Jonnie Hayes Sjorgen, fifty-seven years old, was a shoo-in for reelection next time around. Or would be if he turned up again. He’d vanished minutes after delivering a speech at a fundraiser for battered women. Reno’s D.A., Milliken, was last seen leaving his office two hours before that. By the following afternoon, the media got wind of it, and the circus had been in full swing ever since. By now everyone knew the two of them had gone to high school together right here in Reno. They’d graduated the same year. Jonnie had been class president his senior year and six foot six Milliken had been an all star on the Reno High basketball team. They had been friends, still were, and both were gone. The story, with its connections to the past, was a sex boutique for journalists.
In spite of a tendency to use the word “proactive” in speeches, Jonnie had been a popular mayor for six-plus years. He’d been voted Reno’s most eligible bachelor five years running. Women’s groups adored him, swooned in his presence—that year-round tan, curly silver-black hair, boyish grin, capped teeth, dark green Jaguar. He was rich. He was a guy I loved to hate, especially after he’d made a move on Dallas.
Adding another layer of melodrama to an already unlikely story, Jonnie’s father, Wendell Sjorgen, had been murdered outside a saloon on Wells Avenue twenty years earlier, a tidbit whose effect on Nielsen ratings was not lost on the networks.
So far, not a single ray of light had been shed on what might have happened to Jonnie and Dave. The dominant theory, rumor had it, was that they were somewhere in the vicinity of Great Abaco or Nassau, laughing their heads off on a pristine beach with topless giggling nut-brown girls in attendance providing rum drinks with little umbrellas in them, and that a big chunk of city money would turn up missing any day now, if only the accountants could find it. It didn’t hurt that theory one bit that Jonnie’s Jaguar and Milliken’s Jeep Cherokee had been found the day after they’d vanished, parked side by side at the Airport Plaza Hotel on Terminal Way, directly across from Reno-Tahoe International Airport, even though it had been determined that the pair hadn’t flown anywhere, at least not using their own names. Nor had security tapes shown them to be in the airport on or around the first critical twenty-four hours of their disappearance.
Dallas had kept my name, which figured. She would die before calling herself Dallas Frick again. There were times when I thought the only reason she’d married me was for the name—Dallas Angel has an undeniable ring to it—but I knew that wasn’t fair and wasn’t true. We’d simply been too young. Nineteen. I knew now that my primary reason for saying “I do” back then had
