In Reno you could breathe and gamble all at once. Throw in the great six-week divorce, and it was perfect. After World War II, however, things began to change. The Mob discovered Vegas; air conditioners and airplanes made it practical to plant a new oasis in the middle of a wasteland. Movie stars from Hollywood could cut their travel time in half, get married in a flash. Strangely enough, although the same laws held throughout Nevada, Reno held the edge on broken marriages, while Vegas rang with wedding bells. Go figure. By the 1970s, Las Vegas housed three-quarters of Nevada’s population, putting Reno squarely in the shade.
The big fade was more obvious in daylight, when the neon wasn’t glaring in your eyes, but Remo recognized the signs by day or night. The town’s main drag was small, perhaps one-sixth the size of that in Vegas, and you didn’t need a tank to force your way through tourist traffic. Near the edge of town, he found the most convincing evidence of alclass="underline" a failed casino, dark, arid, vacant.
Any time a gambler couldn’t make a living in Nevada, there was definitely something wrong.
There was twenty miles of nothing on the drive from Reno down to Carson City. This was the real Nevada, empty space that seemed to stretch forever, with the city lights no more than a reflected glow on the horizon. You could almost close your eyes and picture wagon trains, all hot and dusty, weary scouts in search of water fit to drink.
He pushed the Mazda, holding it at seventy until a highway sign announced that he was rolling into Carson City. If Las Vegas had diminished Reno, the state capital was nothing but a fly speck by comparison. Aside from the casinos jammed together on a few short blocks downtown, the view reminded him of something lifted from the dry plains of Wyoming, maybe Kansas or Nebraska. It was cow town all the way. Or maybe sheep.
He drove through town on Carson Street, paused in the parking lot of a convenience store to double-check his street map, then proceeded south until he hit Kings Canyon Road. A right turn there, and Remo drove another few blocks till he found the address he was looking for. There was a Lincoln Town Car in the driveway, pale light spilling through thin curtains from the living room’s broad picture window.
Remo killed his lights, pulled in and parked behind the Lincoln. Took it easy when he closed the driver’s door behind him, then circled around the Mazda’s nose and moved toward the front door of the house. The curtains weren’t designed with privacy in mind, but he saw no one in the living room. More lights were burning in what Remo took to be a dining room and kitchen area beyond, but he was not prepared to scramble through the flower bed to peer inside.
He rang the bell instead, and waited half a minute before a stocky man with thinning hair and wire-rimmed glasses answered. Charcoal slacks and white dress shirt, the collar button fastened, but no tie in evidence, as if the doorbell had distracted him midway through taking off his business suit.
“Good evening. Mr. Cristobal?”
“What do you want?”
“That’s Yuli Cristobal?”
“And who are you?”
The man had a knack for answering one question with another. Remo palmed the bogus federal ID and gave him time to read the fine print.
“FBI?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you want?” he asked again.
“Your name, for starters. Are you Yuli Cristobal?”
“l am.”
“In that case, I have several questions for you. May I step inside?”
“What? I mean, yes, of course.”
The house-revealed a woman’s touch, but from the dust and scattered magazines in evidence, the touch had not been all that recent.
“We’re alone?” asked Remo.
“Yes, My wife is visiting her parents, down in Beaver,” Cristobal informed him, adding “Utah,” almost as an afterthought.
“Can we sit down?”
“Yes, please. I’m sorry.”
He was nervous, this one. Remo wondered how much of it was the natural result of being startled by an unexpected—and unwelcome—visit from the FBI. Was there a guilty conscience underneath the soft exterior, complete with oily sheen of perspiration?
“Mr. Cristobal, are you the owner of the local mortuary known as Cristobal and Son?”
“I am.”
“Which one are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, are you ‘Cristobal’ or ‘Son.’”
“Both, I suppose. My father died in 1986.1 never got around to changing names.”
“How long have you been working in the family business?”
“May I ask what this is all about? I mean, if there’s some kind of problem, why not come directly to the point?”
“That’s what I’m doing, Mr. Cristobal, if you’ll allow me to proceed.”
“Of course.” He slumped back in his La-Z-Boy, thick fingers drumming on the padded arms. “What was the question, please?”
“How long have you—”
“Oh, right Since I was born, in one way or another.” Yuli Cristobal displayed a fleeting smile that could have been mistaken for a grimace. “Dad was always talking shop, you know? I started working holidays and summers at the home when I was nine or ten. Two years of junior college on the technical procedures, just to satisfy the state. I went full-time in 1970…no, make that ’69.”
“I’m looking into something that occurred before that time,” said Remo.
“As I said—”
“Specifically in 1965.”
The undertaker shut his mouth so quickly, it reminded Remo of a snapping turtle. He could almost hear the teeth snap, and it took a moment for his grudging host to speak again.
“In ’65, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“And it’s about a client?”
“Yes.”
“My father would have handled any business details,” Cristobal informed him.
“Still, you might recall the case. It was…unusual.”
More perspiration beaded on the undertaker’s forehead. Trying to be casual, he took a swipe with his right hand, and must have smeared some in his eyes. It left him blinking, for a moment, blushing with embarrassment.
“Unusual?”
“An inmate from the prison who was executed. Thomas Allen Hardy:”
“Executed? Hardy? No…well, hmm, perhaps I do remember that one.” Cristobal was jamming mental gears, a vain attempt to get his story straight without appearing foolish. “Yes, in fact. The name would have escaped me, but I do recall we got a client from the prison, back around that time.”
“Your father would have done the paperwork on that?”
“Or Mom. She kept the books in those days.”
“And is she…?”
“Passed on in ’81,” Cristobal answered.
“My sympathies.”
“I’m curious,” said Cristobal. “This gentleman—well, maybe not—this fellow has been gone for thirty years. Are you investigating him?”
“It’s technical,” said Remo, judging that the time had come for some selective bullshit, seasoned with a dash of truth. “He was a contract killer in the sixties, with a number of suspected cases still unsolved. New evidence suggests we may be able to indict a couple of his past employers, but we have to start at the beginning.”
“With his funeral?”
“I’ve spoken to the individual who claimed his body from the prison,” Remo said. “It turns out she was paid to make arrangements for the funeral, specifically instructed that the body should be sent to Cristobal and Son.”
“Instructed by…?” The undertaker cocked one eyebrow, looking rather like a sweaty bam owl.
“I was hoping you could tell me that,” said Remo.