“What happened to your Triple-A?” I asked.
“I, uh, sort of let it lapse.”
“Good move. Where are you now?”
“Macy’s. Meadowood.”
Macy’s. Of course. Where else? What kind of a gumshoe was I? “Where at?”
“The east side. North of the Sears extension.”
“I’ll get there soon as I can. Say, fifteen, twenty minutes?”
“Great. Thanks, Mort.”
I hung up. Three pairs of eyes looked up, then down. The chair squawked as I got to my feet, announcing my departure.
“Family emergency,” I said to Betty. “Try to keep me on the payroll, okay?”
She didn’t smile as I left, but I thought Phil looked hopeful that maybe I’d blown it and wouldn’t be back.
* * *
The Toyota was hot enough to broil salmon when I opened the door. I let it cool a little before getting in. It’s too small for me, but on IRS wages, and with a double mortgage, and stashing the maximum allowable into a Roth IRA, it was all I could reasonably afford. Well, okay, I can be cheap. Perhaps it was one of those final straws, the reason Dallas finally split—me buying that car, used, already scarred by battle. Once she got the name Angel and figured out where I was headed, how far I was likely to go, and Nicole was in her freshman year of high school, there wasn’t much to hold her. I couldn’t blame her. Turns out there wasn’t much to hold me either, once I’d hit forty and saw that long empty stretch of road ahead. It had just taken me longer to figure it out, or at least to do something about it.
Dallas was standing beside her Mercedes when I pulled up. No TV crews were hanging around filming the event, which made me think Jonnie’s disappearance was winding down even more than I’d thought. Later she told me she’d raced through an almost-red light somewhere on South Virginia Street to give two news vans the slip.
She looked good. Dallas always looks good. At the breakfast table, asleep, mucking in the garden, sweating on a StairMaster, Dallas looked terrific. She would look good mud wrestling Tommy Lasorda. Hell, she would make Lasorda look good, not a mean trick.
She had on a green skirt, a sleeveless pearl-colored blouse, gold necklace, gold bangles. Even in all that clothing you could sense the Playmate body underneath. I could, at least.
“Nice outfit,” I said, squeezing out of the Toyota like a circus clown. “I can see why you didn’t want to change the tire yourself.”
She beamed at me.
“What I can’t understand is why you don’t have a line out here,” I added, looking around. The lot was about half full this close to the building. Farther out it was empty, rippling with heat waves. The asphalt felt slightly squishy under my shoes.
“A line?”
“Of drooling hopefuls, fighting over who gets to change the tire and impress the gorgeous lady.”
“Oh, Mort.”
Oh, Mort, what? She thought I wasn’t serious? I crouched by the tire. She didn’t have to tell me which one, sleuth that I am. Left rear. It was one flat sonofabitch. I even spotted the gash where the knife blade had gone in.
I stood up quickly and looked around. I didn’t see anyone staring in our direction, but someone knew where Dallas was. Either that or it was one of those random things. Some people don’t like Mercedes, or Mercedes owners. Maybe she should’ve been driving a Smart Car, or a Zapino. Something that would fit in her purse.
“Got a spare?” I asked.
She shrugged, handed me a set of keys, singling out the one for the trunk.
She stood a few feet away as I popped the lid and looked in, my eyes goggling and double taking at the sight of Jonnie Sjorgen’s head staring milky eyed up at me, blackish tongue protruding. Just his head. Nothing else.
Dallas screamed. I caught her a quarter second before she fell.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NEXT FEW hours went by in something of a blur. At least we got a free lunch out of it. Well, I did. Dallas barely touched her salad.
Two patrol cars were at the scene two minutes after I called it in. Twenty minutes later I counted ten RPD cruisers, four sheriff’s cars, one paramedic van, a fire truck, three carloads of unsmiling RPD plainclothes detectives, a coroner’s wagon, and a particularly ugly gray-green sedan full of blue-suited, stiff-legged, serious-looking FBI agents who must’ve broken every speed law on the books hauling ass over from their Booth Street offices. Everyone with a scanner, a siren and a so-called need-to-know had hot footed it over, and a few more besides. I was the only former representative of the IRS, which would no doubt make my previous colleagues green with envy. I didn’t see any border agents, but the day was young. The number of flashing blue-and-red lights was enough to cause skin cancer. The huge turnout of law enforcement personnel was too late to help Mayor Jonnie when he’d really needed it, but it was impressive all the same.
Like locusts, the media descended—an almost biblical plague. Television crews from each of the four local network affiliates were crawling over each other like Twister contestants, practically rioting in an attempt to out-scoop everyone else. Given the situation, that was a physical impossibility, as any eight-year-old could’ve told them, but apparently they didn’t know that. The word had gotten out and they were trying to get a shot of Sjorgen’s head for the six o’clock news, just in time for dinner. But with the banners of crime scene tape and the burly officers backing it up, neither they nor the print newshounds were having any luck.
Reno Police Chief Paul Menteer was nosing around, staying out of the way while trying to appear in charge, looking solemn, no doubt sizing up the political
