“Right. Is that in the PI’s manual?”
“Page two-fifteen, right next to ‘If you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.’”
“I’ve heard that one. It’s been a big help in my life.”
She stared at me. “What we’ve got to do is find the link between Jonnie and Milliken.”
“There are probably hundreds.”
“I said the link. The thing that got them killed.”
“Which could be almost anything.”
“Just about,” she admitted. “It’s a crazy damn world out there.” She pulled a moustache the size of a clothes brush out of the glove compartment and handed it to me. “Here, put this on. I don’t want to have to explain you to anyone.”
* * *
She gave me a dishwater-blond wig, too—shaggy, unkempt hair, telling me it was borrowed so don’t lose it. Who would want it back? I wanted to give it a bath and a name, but we spotted three news vans before we’d gone a mile, so I wore the damn thing. The moustache was the same color, entirely hiding my upper lip.
“They had screws in their nuts,” Jeri said while we waited at a light at First and Sierra, engine rumbling impatiently.
“Huh?” I stared at her.
“Jonnie and Dave. I spoke with Ben last night, way off the record. He was jumpy, but happy that we’d salvaged his job for him.”
“After almost losing it for him,” I said. Jeri brushed the comment aside with a wave of her hand.
“What do you mean, screws?” I asked.
“Standard drywall screws. Three inch. Twisted through their scrotums, right through their cojones.”
“Aw, jeez.”
“According to Ben, Boyce says it was the only thing keeping their nuts in the sac.”
“This’s a nice, uplifting conversation.”
“Maybe I should leave you in the dark where you belong.”
“That sonofabitch Boyce held out on us.”
The light changed. The Porsche shot forward, across Sierra. “They always hold out, Mort. It’s how they are. If that surprises you, you’re probably not cut out for PI work.”
“I’m learning.”
She looked over at me. “Maybe.” She was silent for a moment. “One of Jonnie’s eyes had been put out, too. The left. Before he died.”
“Sounds like the mayor had a real bad day.”
Our first stop was the courthouse, fictitious names department. I followed Jeri in, looking around to see if anyone was laughing hysterically at my disguise, but no one gave me a second glance.
Jeri spent several minutes chatting with a woman her own age behind a counter, ignoring me. I tried to look inconspicuous, thinking about someone putting screws through Sjorgen’s balls. A mist of sweat broke out on my forehead at the thought. Jeri finally paid a pair of six-dollar fees and got printouts of local businesses in which either Sjorgen or Milliken had had an interest.
Outside, in the Porsche, she studied them for a while then handed the sheets to me. “Remember ’em,” she said, firing up the engine, backing out.
I looked them over. Sjorgen & Howard Title Co. headed Jonnie’s list. He also had full or partial interest in Sjorgen Fence Co., the Silver Lode Motel, Jade Motel, K&S Vending Co., River Bend Trailer Park, and Sjorgen Restaurant Supply. Milliken’s only business venture was as a junior partner in W. B. Rennie Construction Company in Sparks. In fact, I’d heard all these names on TV, but now we had hard copies with filing dates, names of corporate officers where applicable, addresses, and the law firms that had set up the corporations and filed the paperwork, none of which looked useful to me. Maybe that was why I was in training.
Minutes later we ended up at the Reno Gazette-Journal, in the morgue where microfiche and DVDs of back issues are kept. No one recognized me in the wig, which I found amazing until I saw myself in a restroom mirror sometime later and didn’t recognize myself.
“No hassles, they just let you in here?” I peered around the room. A fluorescent fixture buzzed, blinking on and off.
“A PI’s license helps. But it’s connections and schmoozing that does the trick in places like this. And not making trouble.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“And not making trouble,” she repeated, eyes locked on mine. “In case you were thinking about removing the wig. Or the ’stache.”
“Yeah, schmoozing. I got that.”
She sighed. “It goes with the job. You’ll find out.”
The morgue held an ancient microfiche reader and drawers of canisters. The microfiche reader was a relic now, inactive, a museum piece, the information having been transferred years ago to CDs, then to DVDs. Now the news was beamed daily or even hourly into electronic storage with a few clicks of a mouse—or instantly and automatically, no human intervention needed. Six computers set up to read DVDs took up one wall of the room, and dozens of drawers of DVDs, catalogued by date, going back over fifty years. A pleasant-looking Hispanic girl, Maria, twenty-five years old, pretty and plump, was nominally in charge of the place. A few people drifted in and out, unearthing little-known facts of yesteryear to plug into today’s news.
“How far in the past are we digging?” I asked Jeri.
“Not far. Jonnie and Dave were abducted two weeks ago. Whatever started all this probably didn’t happen much before then. Someone was pissed off. Pissed-off psychos don’t usually wait very long to spring into action.”
“Any idea what we’re looking for?”
She shrugged. “Something a mayor and district attorney were in together? Something political? Who knows? Anything that might get someone’s back up.”
“That leaves the field wide open.”
“Just keep an open mind, Mort.”
We sat side by side at two computers in a quiet corner. The most recent stuff was on servers, immediately accessible. I started back six weeks, and Jeri went back three. “Front page local news,” she said. “Any local stuff in the Nevada section, especially if it’s political. And the local business pages. Don’t bother with anything national and international.”
“Pretty exciting work. Where’s my nitro?”
The
