By the time he masterminded the bank job that got him sent to Central State, he was middle-aged and desperate for a big score. The bomb he said he had when he stuck up that bank was his idea of a joke. Nobody was laughing.
All this information I’d found online about Reno Bob went through my head as I drove through the suburbs west of Cleveland, looking for the address he had given me when we talked on the phone. I found it, finally, down a quiet side street in Parma, a blue-collar sort of place filled with mom-and-pop stores, churches, bars, and tiny homes.
Reno’s house was a small, neat bungalow with white aluminum siding, blue shutters, and a shade tree on the front lawn. He told me that if I rang the bell-I did-and he didn’t answer-he didn’t-he’d be over at the park across the street, so I moved my car over there, parked in a newly blacktopped lot, and walked past a wooden swing set and a sandbox where someone had left a flattened spare tire.
I’d like to say I wasn’t nervous, but let’s be frank: I’d heard so many bad things about Reno and his temper, my knees were knocking together. They kept it up, too, right until I saw that the only other person in the park was a tiny old man wearing baggy denim shorts, a green and yellow Hawaiian print shirt, and enormous tortoise-shell glasses. Temper or not, if this was Reno Bob, I knew I could take him.
He didn’t look at me when I walked up to him. He was busy working on the canvas he had set up on an easel in front of him.
He was painting a picture of the maple tree about thirty feet from where we stood. The painting included the small lake beyond and the couple ducks and Canada geese that floated by. Art history degree aside, I’m not an expert, but I knew the painting was better than just good, even though the old guy’s hands shook with every stroke.
I waited until he finished adding the last bits of green to the leaves on the tree. “Reno? I’m Pepper.”
“Nobody’s called me Reno in a long time.” When he finally turned to look at me, I saw that his face was as lined as an old blanket. Reno’s arms were stick-skinny and his knees were knobby. He was wearing a brand-spanking-new pair of Nikes that were so clean and white, they made my eyes hurt. “You said you wanted to see me. You didn’t say what you wanted.”
Of course, I expected him to ask-that was the whole point-but I shrugged like I wasn’t sure. “I’ll bet plenty of people want to meet you and talk to you.”
“About the old days?” Reno wiped his hands on a rag he pulled out of his pocket and got to work cleaning up his painting supplies. “Not so much anymore. I used to have a following, you know.”
I saw my opportunity and jumped on it. “Back when you tried to rob that bank with the bomb.” I nodded. “I hear back then, you were like a god or something.”
Behind his glasses, Reno’s eyes glittered. “They all wanted to interview me, Dan Rather and Mike Wallace and even that other guy, that Geraldo. Oh yeah!” He lifted the canvas off the easel. It was almost as big as him, but he didn’t have any trouble slipping it into a wooden carrier. “I was something, all right. They all came down to Central State to talk to me. Even got a couple fellows visiting from Hollywood. They wanted to make a movie about me, you know.”
“Until Jefferson Lamar made sure your visitors were cut off and you were treated just like any other prisoner.”
His hands stilled over his art supplies, and Reno shot a look over his shoulder at me. “You’re too young to know about all that.”
“But not too young to know you must have been plenty mad.”
“You think?” He got back to work, stowing his brushes and his tubes of paint in a plastic carryall. “That was a long time ago.”
“And you don’t hold any of it against Warden Lamar?”
Reno scratched a finger behind his ear. “Warden’s been dead for a lot of years. What happened to him, that doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It might. Maybe to his wife. She thinks he was innocent.”
“What else is a wife going to say? She heard the evidence. Same as we all did. She knows he’s guilty, she just won’t admit it to herself.”
“And if the warden was framed?”
He was done packing his supplies, so Reno turned and gave me his full attention. “Is that what the widow thinks? Did she ask you to come here and talk to me about it? Or is this just something you think?”
“Actually, it’s something I know.”
“Really?” He laughed, then coughed. There was a pack of Camels in his pocket, and he thumped one out, lit it, and took a drag. “Back at Central State, that was back in the day when I hated a lot of people.” The words hissed out of him along with a long stream of nasty smoke that I stepped aside to avoid. “I was angry all the time, you know? I’ve learned to channel my energy. Now, I paint. And I stop and smell the flowers.”
“But back in the day…”
“Back in the day…” He coughed again and spat on the ground. “I didn’t hate nobody as much as I hated Lamar. He thought he could turn Central State into some kind of boot camp. You know, reform everybody. Guess he learned his lesson, huh?”
“Because somebody framed him and he got a taste of his own prison medicine?”
“If that’s what you think.” Reno picked up the crate he’d put his canvas in and hauled it to the blue Prism parked three spaces from my Mustang. I could have been a sport and helped him with the rest of his supplies, but I was afraid if I did, it would give him an excuse to leave. So instead, I waited for him to stow the canvas, then come all the way back.
By the time he did, he was breathing hard.
And I was ready for him.
“If Lamar was framed for Vera Blaine’s murder, who do you think did it?” I asked.
He lit another cigarette. He blew out another stream of smoke. “You think I had something to do with it.”
“I’m talking to everyone I can. You’re one of the people who might have done it.”
“You’re right. I might have.” Reno Bob hoisted the carryall into his arms, his expression as serene as that painting of the tree and those ducks on the pond. “But if that’s true, then you got a hell of a lot of nerve coming here and talking to me.” He turned toward the parking lot. “You could be putting yourself in a lot of danger.”
Was that a nice, friendly warning?
Or a threat?
Since it was the last thing Reno Bob said to me before he got in his car and drove away, I thought about it all the way home. Even then, I still wasn’t certain, not when I got out of the car, slung my purse over my shoulder, and headed for my apartment.
I was still thinking about it when a man jumped out of the alley behind my building, grabbed me, and put a knife to my throat.
12
“You’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, Y bitch.”
The man’s words scraped against my ear. The blade of his knife nicked my skin. I felt a wet, warm drop on my neck, and I didn’t have to think twice to know what it was.
Blood.
My blood.
I would have gulped, but I was afraid if I did, my throat would end up even closer to that knife blade.
One of my attacker’s arms was around me, and he yanked me back so fast, my head snapped. “Stay out of it,” he said.
And what did I do? Well, that’s the weird thing, and I guess it means I’ve been in the private investigation business a little too long. Instead of being scared out of my mind like any normal person would be, I was busy trying to think if I’d ever heard his voice before.
I couldn’t place it, and a second after I realized it, I also knew it didn’t matter.
What did matter, see, was me getting out of this little predicament alive.
As far as I could tell, the only way to do that was to take matters into my own hands.
I am not athletic, but remember, I had once taken years of dance lessons. I liked the costumes and, of course, the spotlight, but I could never keep the routines straight, and I hated to practice. Poor Mademoiselle Adrienne, my dance instructor, had despaired of me. Yet somehow, in this the most unlikely of moments, it all came rushing back. In one quick movement (more lurch than en avant), I shot forward just enough to give myself a little momentum, then stepped back with that little ballon bounce Mademoiselle always wanted from me and never got, and slammed my foot against my attacker’s instep. He was caught off guard just long enough to loosen his hold, and when he did, I darted forward, spun around with as much pizzazz as if I was executing an allegro, slipped my purse from my shoulder, and swung. Hard.