Low End of Nowhere Read online

  Streeter touched the camera in his gym bag for assurance and headed down the hall. Clearly, the blonde hadn’t seen him. The muffled smack of rubber balls on hardwood echoed around him. Subdued, almost eerie lighting engulfed the hallway. On both sides there were small doors with slit windows, like some kind of upscale prison in a Nike commercial.

  He wanted to give the couple time to start their squash game, so he stopped in front of a tinted, one-way window looking into an empty aerobics room. Catching his reflection in the glass, he straightened his shoulders. Although he was pushing forty-two and he was just over six feet tall and weighed a solid two hundred ten pounds, Streeter still had the childhood habit of slouching. He also noticed that he should consider getting a trim. His thick brown hair was long and combed straight back. No sideburns. He kept his hair clean and combed. The ends fell nonchalantly far over the collar of his pale-blue Oxford shirt. He wore it long enough so as not to look corporate but still kept it neat. With his high, prominent cheekbones and clear, tan skin, he looked pleasantly rugged, but not pretty.

  Hard digging and a little luck were about to pay off nicely. Streeter had been hired three weeks earlier by a nervous insurance-claims adjuster who asked him to dig up something on the little blonde.

  “Show she ain’t hurt nearly so bad, you know, like she claims in that bullshit lawsuit a hers,” Swanson, the adjuster, had told him. “Do a real number on this chick—okay, Streeter? She’s trying to make jerks out of us. No way in hell she got hurt with what happened to her.” He opened a legal-sized file folder and read from it. “The jacket on her goes like this. Her name is Story Moffatt, if you can believe that. Looks great. Sort of beer-commercial cute.” He pulled a photograph from the folder and slid it across his desk. “But she’s savvy as hell in business. Runs her own successful ad agency, and she’s all of maybe thirty-two.”

  He quit reading and looked up. “Then she gets into a two-car fender bender a few months ago. It’s our guy’s fault and now she’s suing for sixty grand. The old pain-and-suffering routine.” He emphasized his frustration with a prolonged shrug. “Claims she’s so bad off, most days she’s lucky to hook up her damned bra without screaming. Not much unusual about that, but our guy was going all of four miles an hour when he hit her. More like a burp than a collision. We fixed the damage with a tweezers and nail polish, for Chrissake. Then she comes up with this crap. Her lawyer knows a, shall we say, ethically limber orthopedic surgeon, who diagnoses her: ‘soft tissue injured, unspecified.’ He sends her to a chiropractor and pain clinic. Three treatments a week at ninety bucks a pop, and now she’s got enough medical costs to sue.”

  Swanson had sniffed around on his own but came up empty. So he called a friend who knew Streeter—a bounty hunter, of all things. The adjuster didn’t even know those guys still existed. “Bounty hunter” sounded a tad theatrical, but Streeter made his living tracking down people who posted bail and then couldn’t seem to find the courthouse at the appropriate time. He worked alone, mostly for a bail bondsman with whom he shared a loose business-and-housing arrangement. Because Colorado has no licensing for private eyes, from time to time Streeter also did related chores for lawyers and insurance companies. Chores like witness interviewing and surveillances. Or skip tracing: locating people who don’t want to be found. As the bail bondsman put it, “We’re finders of lost assholes.”

  “You’re gonna love this one, big man,” Swanson said when he gave Streeter the five-hundred-dollar retainer. “We’re on the righteous side here. No one gets hurt at that speed unless the car runs over their head.”

  Streeter took the check and looked at the adjuster. Their mutual friend was a bookie Streeter had used for years. The bounty hunter followed college football and basketball religiously and wasn’t above putting down a few bucks on games when he got a stiff feeling about one of the teams. His feelings paid off with remarkable frequency. Streeter had a keen eye for all manner of team statistics and minute pregame detail. But that keen eye was best utilized in his most passionate avocation: trivia. Annually, he fielded a team in The Knowledge Bowl, a trivia contest in Boulder, and Streeter had even made a two-day appearance on Jeopardy a couple of years ago. Pop culture and movies were his specialty. “I’ll get right on it,” he told Swanson as he stuffed the check in his shirt pocket.

  It had started off badly, but Streeter didn’t panic. He sat on Moffatt’s house one Saturday morning and then tailed her late one Wednesday afternoon. Nothing. She was being careful, the cervical collar with her always. Story moved slowly, gingerly getting in and out of cars like she was wearing sandpaper panties. Strictly Oscar material. So much for deep distance and caution. The retainer was melting and his curiosity burned. That’s when he decided to go face-to-face with the woman.

  Getting people to talk was a strong suit. He had those safe, big brown eyes and that calm demeanor. He always listened intently, leaning in to people like nothing else in the whole world mattered except them. And usually he’d wait a few seconds after they spoke before responding. Just long enough to be noticed, but not so long as to be irritating. It let them know he was really considering what they just said. People responded to that, opened up. His size helped. Years of relentless weight lifting gave his shoulders mass without making him appear clumsy. Shoulders like a linebacker, which is what he was when he played the holy game of football in college. Linebacker intensity in the eyes, too.

  People felt protected just being around him. Especially women. They liked Streeter and he liked them. Did he ever. Trouble was, his experiences in that department were consistently catastrophic. He’d already racked up four failed marriages, he’d been engaged another three times, and was at least nominally involved with more women than he could recall. They tended to own him. And it wasn’t only that he couldn’t say no to an attractive woman. Streeter couldn’t say no to any woman with a pulse and at least a double-digit IQ. Take this Story Moffatt. He knew the first time he saw her smug beauty that she was trouble. Big trouble. If he ever fell for her, he’d be doing whatever it took to keep her around. Whatever. Good thing this was strictly business.

  Story’s advertising firm was located in Denver’s eclectic Capitol Hill section, so named because it was a wide, low hill featuring the state capitol roughly in the middle of it. Her company consisted of five employees and a clientele that netted her nearly six figures annually. She was divorced, childless (“Who has time for a family?”), and overachieving in a business where nerve and style got you a hell of a lot further than an impressive resume or real job skills. Streeter figured he could best get her attention by passing himself off as a prospective client. From his desk he dug out an old business card once belonging to Brad Tessmer, owner of the defunct Arapahoe Auto Body Shop. Then he set up an appointment with Story to get some four-color brochures made.

  “That collar must really hurt you, Miss Moffatt,” Streeter told her as they sat down in her office the following Tuesday afternoon. Collar or no, she looked sensational. Her hair, almost white-blond, was long but styled to accent the sensual roundness of her face. She wore a pinstriped pants suit, tailored to her body so closely that it easily avoided any trace of masculinity. “I bet that’s slowing you up plenty, huh?”

  “I manage,” she said with little emotion and then flashed him a quick, obligatory grin. Even that forced, all-business smile had enough voltage to make Streeter blink. “But it certainly doesn’t make life any easier. Please, call me Story.”

  “I had to wear something like that once. Hurt like a mother. How’d you get yours?”

  “It’s really not important.” Her voice gave no openings. “Let’s just say I earned it. A car accident, actually.”

  “Think that there might be a little payoff for you in all this? Hope you got yourself a good lawyer.”

  “Mr. Tessmer, I have a busy schedule this afternoon and I’m sure a man like you has a million things to do as well. My neck will take care of itself, but this brochure will need our complete attentio
n.”

  Her own deep-brown eyes—he had never seen such dark-brown eyes on a blonde before—returned his gaze. She used her best low-end client voice. A real pro. Not a trace of perfunctory flirting. She had a way of telling you to go pound sand that made it seem like it was your idea. Streeter pushed harder but got nowhere. Then, just as they were finishing up, she took a phone call. When she swiveled around in her chair to talk, he scanned everything on her desk. His prayers were answered in her open Daytimer. There it was, an entry for Friday morning. “Creekside SC—S. court. Match.” Creekside Sports Club. It had to be. Combination meat market and high-tech gym, it was Denver’s premier health club, located in fashionable Cherry Creek. “S. court. Match”—some kind of court game. Probably “S.” for squash.

  When he left her office, he called the club to verify his hunch by pretending to be her confused opponent trying to nail down the correct time.

  “Yeah,” the guy at the front desk told him. “Story Moffatt. Eight-thirty on Friday morning. You got the date right. Court twelve.” He said her name as though he knew her and liked her. That didn’t surprise Streeter.

  It put him just down the hall from court twelve at a little after eight. When Story and her friend had had time to get their game going, Streeter went to the court door and grabbed his camera. He let the gym bag slide to the floor. He noticed her cervical collar and he winced. Supposed to be for broken bodies, not for making quick cash. Streeter flashed on the man he’d killed long ago.

  Killing someone with his bare hands drastically changed Streeter’s life. It had a profound impact on Gary Van der Heyden as well. He was the twenty-year-old Streeter killed. It happened in the summer of 1974, between their sophomore and junior years at Western Michigan University. Streeter and Gary both played linebacker. The two never got along, and the animosity boiled over in a drunken fight at a preseason frat party. Insults were exchanged and they ended up on the frat house lawn, charging each other like a couple of demented rhinos. Finally, he gave Gary one good shot to the head. His massive forearm and elbow came up like a renegade piston, catching the smaller man just below the chin. Gary’s head shot back, and his neck snapped like frozen vinyl. He died on the spot.

  Streeter, who had been getting some attention from pro scouts after his standout sophomore year, never played football after that. He left Western Michigan without graduating. As close as he ever came to a four-year diploma was an associate accounting degree from a community college in his hometown of Denver. After that, he did bookkeeping by day and, because of his size and cool demeanor, he was a bouncer at country-and-western bars at night. That’s where he met most of his wives and fiancées. That’s also how he met Frank Dazzler. A veteran bail bondsman, Frank came to Mollie’s Hitching Post back in the summer of 1985 looking for a jittery car thief who was partial to George Strait music and Old Milwaukee beer. He and Streeter got to talking about their respective jobs at the front door just before closing time.

  “A bouncer and an accountant, huh? You like this kind of thing, big guy?” Frank asked, tossing his head to the side to indicate the bar. “You seem way too sharp to be checking IDs and throwing these phony cowboys around. Particularly at a shithole like Mollie’s.”

  “Both jobs can get boring sometimes,” Streeter conceded. “Especially keeping books. But this has its moments, if you can stand the music. It’s really a pretty decent place.”

  Just then an announcement blared unceremoniously over the loudspeaker inside. “Last call for alcohol. Closing time. If you’re not going to fuck the help, ya gotta leave.”

  Frank nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Real classy. A regular Radio City Music Hall. But I’ll bet it does have some payback, at that, what with the little cowgirlies and all. As for me, I’m way too old to chase these goofs around town day and night. Look, here’s my card. You come by and see me sometime and I’ll give you a job that’s guaranteed never to bore you. You’ll get to use your brains and your brawn. And there’s some real money in it, too.”

  Three days later, Streeter walked into Frank’s office and grabbed a pair of handcuffs, and he hadn’t worked another bar or kept another book since.

  Now, looking through the window slit into the squash court, he could see Story bent over, waiting for the serve. Bouncing easily up on the balls of her feet, she was ready. Kill-shot concentration. Her weight moved easily from cheek to cheek in a little round butt with dark shorts stretched over it tight as wallpaper. That butt had seen some serious gym time, Streeter noticed. Tanned legs flowed out of the bottom of the shorts without a sign of a wrinkle anywhere. The woman’s entire life appeared to be so seamless. So smooth and nearly effortless.

  He lifted the camera, and as he took the pictures, he knew he would be putting at least one major wrinkle in her day. He almost nodded to her out there on the court. You know: Good try, lady. She made a strong run at easy insurance money. But thanks to him she’d be coming up short. She had some real brass to her, still Streeter sensed that the line between brass and bitch was so slender, at times it almost disappeared. When he was done shooting, he took one last look as she scooped low to backhand a stinger off the front wall. Not a hint of pain or stiffness anywhere. He just wished he could be there when her lawyer showed her the pictures.

  THREE

  Max Herman sat squirming across the desk from his lawyer. Max had already had his shot in life. Clearly, he’d blown it. Here he was, all of forty-three, and he’d pissed away more than most men ever have. Ten years earlier, the American dream was his. A beautiful wife, two daughters, a plumbing-supply business that grossed him nearly a hundred and a half a year, and a cool one-ninety-four bowling average. Within a few years, it was sliding fast, and by the time he was forty it was gone. In its place was a cocaine Jones that cost over a grand a week, a twenty-three-year-old Mexican girlfriend with a prison teardrop tattoo, and his two daughters in therapy—neither of whom would talk to a daddy who was over a year behind in his support payments.

  “Oh, hell yeah. I know I got troubles.” Max bent forward to crush out yet another Camel Light. He coughed savagely, spraying ashes across the otherwise immaculate desktop. “That’s obvious, counselor. Everybody seems to want a chunk oudda my tail. But there’s gotta be a way oudda all this mess. There’s always a way, ain’t that the truth?”

  “Of course there is,” the lawyer offered unenthusiastically.

  The attorney, Thomas Hardy Cooper, looked at his client and wondered how well he was hiding his disgust. If it weren’t for the twenty-two-thousand-dollar retainer, already cashed and spent, Cooper wouldn’t give this guy the sweat off his socks. Cooper, who was five years older than Max, couldn’t imagine ever looking that rough.

  Amazingly, Max had managed to gain about fifty pounds of extra blubber while using cocaine daily. “I thought this shit’s supposed to melt the fat off,” he would tell himself angrily as his stomach grew larger by the week. Add in his chain-smoker’s rasp and top it off with the thinning blond hair wilting sadly over his shoulders, and it was obvious that he’d torched his prime. Here he is talking about some “group of heavy hitters” he’s putting together for a townhouse development in the foothills west of Denver, near Golden. Yeah, right. He’s facing up to twenty years for possession of cocaine with intent to deliver, a few more tacked on for a weapons violation, and a whole bunch more thrown in for allegedly threatening a police officer. Top it all off with some forty-three thousand dollars in back child support and Max is basically screwed.

  Only thing is, he was way too far gone to realize it. His brain was so incinerated from his many vicious habits that he’d become prone to monumental lapses from reality. Like three weeks ago, after he was served with a temporary restraining order to keep him away from his ex and the two girls. There was a ten-thirty court hearing set for a week later. Max showed up, all right. Made quite an appearance. He waltzed into court just out of bed, wearing a ratty plaid bathrobe and a vile-looking pair of slippers. But the real coup
de maître was that he had an open plastic bottle of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup sticking out of one pocket.

  Cooper thought how if he had half this yahoo’s troubles he’d save the legal fees, make one more big coke run, and then take off for someplace warm and unknown. Instead, the lawyer focused on his assistant and unofficial paralegal. He couldn’t forget the skirt she wore that morning. So tight, he recalled, he could practically count her pubic hairs. That is, if she didn’t regularly shave “that particular stretch of paradise,” as he referred to it. Streetwise, sexy beyond belief, and precisely half Cooper’s age, Rhonda “Ronnie” Taggert was his sweetest dream come true.

  Cooper was pretty much of a full-fledged dorker himself until law school and a rigid program of self-improvement made him presentable. With a clientele consisting of Max Herman types, he came off as almost classy. But he had never experienced anything like Ronnie. The first time she came into his office, she was with a guy who rivaled Max for sheer, brazen stupidity. She had these bee-stung lips and this porno-queen attitude the lawyer found irresistible. Cooper took on the guy’s rather winnable auto-theft case, along with a seventeen-thousand-dollar retainer, and then did everything humanly possible to see that the poor schlep got double digits in the state prison at Cañon City.

  Coincidentally, that left the precocious if pouty Ms. Taggert unencumbered, uncertain about her future, and open to all offers. The one Cooper made was that she come to work in his office, get her GED, and generally clean up her act to make herself palatable to the lower echelons of Denver’s legal community.

  “We get a little participation from the people up there on the Jefferson County Board and this project should come together real nice,” Max was saying intensely. “I get the whole entire contract for pipes and fixtures, which makes me very well, thank you. Financially speaking, that is. We take care of this bullshit holding charge and all that other crap and get Charlene and the kids off my back, and things’ll look just about right.”