CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

Frank slowed his car to change to the exit lane for Frisco. 90 miles from Denver, in the middle of Summit County. Home to Breckenridge and Keystone and a half hour from Vail. Fortunately, it was a month too early in the season for skiing, so Frank didn’t have to wrestle with a million damn tourists trying to reach the slopes.

He wasn’t here to ski, anyway. He was here to apprehend a bail jumper, haul him in, and ensure taking home the reward money. It’s as if these damn hooligans didn’t realize that every time a bondsman but up their bond, that bondsman was risking his business. They didn’t care, only saw the selfish route.

But Frank understood self-centeredness. Twenty-five years ago, he’d been in the same boat. Not the criminal activities part. At that time, Frank had been a detective in Denver, even though he still felt like a beat cop at heart. He’d gone from being the youngest African-American uniform cop to make detective in Detroit history to being just another suit in a Denver precinct.

He related to selfishness because back then he’d been drinking, and everything was about finding a way to get more alcohol, no matter who it hurt. No matter who got in the way.

Sobriety had changed Frank in many ways, not the least of which was pride in his work. And that’s why he was in Frisco, about to put himself at risk again.

Frank slowed to enter the parking lot of the Baymont Inn, a four-story rectangle off the highway, overlooking Lake Dillon. He considered the parking lot out front, the one out back, and the one off to the side. Despite his ankle feeling swollen already at the altitude, he opted for the far parking lot to the side.

No sense in letting Zaluski find some way to tie the car to Frank, even though the jumper wouldn’t know Frank was after him. Surely Zaluski would suspect someone would be trying to bring him in, but he wouldn’t know Frank’s face.

Attention to the details had kept Frank safe so far.

So Frank parked and hobbled across the lot with his overnight bag, swollen ankles and all. Near the inn, the overpowering stink of Asian food flooded his nostrils. Came from the restaurant attached to the inn. Frank lifted his sweater above his nose, not that it did much good.

He paused to check the outside of the hotel. Four stories, scant balconies on the third and fourth floors. No outside emergency exit stairs. He couldn’t see the roof from here, but there had to be a way to access it. Not that Frank expected a roof chase or to have to leap from balcony to balcony, but it was always good to know the layout before venturing into the lion’s den.

He stepped into the inn’s lobby, a dimly-lit and bustling place with 1970s carpet straight out of The Shining. Probably some retro thing to attract the ironic young hipster crowd.

Frank was looking for Tomás Zaluski, an alleged drug trafficker who happened to be pulled over for a missing tail light in the Denver suburb of Westminster. The arresting officer had located five pounds of marijuana under the spare tire in the trunk. Not a legendary amount, which is why Zaluski had been able to bond out, which gave him the opportunity to skip his court appearance. And that is why Frank found himself in the mountains, to apprehend the jumper and secure the reward.

One of the rare cases that Frank took on for another bail bondsman. He hadn’t posted the guy’s bail, was only trying to recover him for a cash reward. Get him, get the cash. Don’t get him, get nothing.

Frank approached the hotel front desk and smiled at a young white woman behind the counter.

“Morning,” she said. “Welcome to the Baymont. Do you have a reservation?”

There were a few ways Frank could play this. As a detective, all he had to do was flash his badge, which most people accepted as a master key to unlock anything in the world. He’d see this young woman’s eyes light up, and she’d escort him upstairs without any further questions. But, people’s perceptions of bail bondsmen and bounty hunters were a little fuzzier. He could show her ID, but she might not be clear about what she was required to do for him.

Besides, Frank didn’t have a legal right to access the hotel room to wait for Zaluski. He could enter Zaluski’s home, but he would need explicit permission from the hotel to apprehend him there. And, given that Zaluski was in a hotel and not at home, Frank had to assume that the drug trafficker knew this. And, if he knew this, he had to assume that maybe Zaluski had some kind of arrangement with people here at the front desk. Tipping him off if anyone came by, asking questions about him.

All this leading to the point that Frank being honest about his identity and why he was here might hinder his goal. So he had to invent a better way to find out which room was Zaluski’s.

“Sir?”

“Yes. I’m looking for a room. Something on the top floor, if you have it available.”

She clicked at the keys for a few seconds, then flashed her youthful grin at him. Frank paid cash, used an alias, and wrote down a fake license plate number. No reason for this hotel to run his plates that he could think of.

With his keycard in hand and only a small duffel bag slung over his shoulder, Frank rode the elevator to the second floor. He walked into a slim hallway that came to a point at one end. That same severe carpet running the length of the floor. You could get lost staring at those angular shapes.

Down the hallway, a young woman was dragging a toddler behind her. The little boy kept trying to grab at the shapes in the carpet, and the mother would snatch him up, pull him along, scold him. Frank waited until the mother had moved on and turned the corner at the end of the hall.

He unzipped his bag a little and wrapped a hand around a baton, one of the few relics he kept from his beat cop days. He gripped it but did not remove it from the bag.

He stopped at the first open door he could find. Looked in to find a plump Latino woman wiping dust from the side of a wardrobe. Salmon-colored maid outfit wrapped around her ample frame.

“Excuse me?”

The woman clutched her hands to her chest and nodded at him. “Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for a friend of mine. We were supposed to share a room here, but it seems he checked in first. White guy, long black hair, about my same height?”

She tilted her face, her jaw switching back and forth. Wasn’t buying it. “You cannot call him?”

“He’s not picking up his phone. He left me a message and said he was on the second floor, but I don’t know which room. Does that description sound familiar to you?”

Her eyes darted back and forth, and Frank could see her getting worked up. He considered mentioning that he had no connection with Immigration, but he didn’t want to assume.

“No, I do not know him. I’m very busy, please let me get back to work.”

Frank frowned, but he didn’t trouble the lady any further. When he continued down the hall, he noted a man in a suit leaning up against the wall. Huge guy, could have been some ex-Broncos linebacker or something. Gray bumps all over his cheeks and neck from a poor shaving job.

“Sir, do you need something?”

“Just looking for my room.”

The linebacker wore a low-lidded suspicion as he approached Frank. “Can I see your room key?”

Frank held out the keycard, his other hand still gripping the baton in his bag. As he let go of the card, the guy’s eyes flicked down to the hand inside Frank’s bag. Frank let go of the baton and shifted the bag around, behind his body.

The man in the suit took out his phone and swiped the keycard along some card reader thing sticking out of the headphone jack.

“Your room is on the fourth floor, sir. This is two.”

Frank laughed. “Oh, silly me. That’s right, isn’t it? Don’t ever get old, kid. You’ll forget your glasses sitting on top of your head.”

The man smiled politely, not giving much ground. These people were a wary lot. Or maybe that was Frank reading too much into things.

“No problem, sir. Let me walk you to the elevator.”

The man returned the card and escorted Frank back to the elevators. Once Frank was inside, the man leaned in and pressed the 4 button.

“Have a good day, sir.”

The doors swished shut and Frank quickly jabbed the 3 button as the elevator whirred to life. These explorations were so much easier back in his cop days. No need for all this damn cloak and dagger. But, given how much bullshit Frank had been able to leave behind when he retired, it was a fair trade-off.

He kept thinking of the blood thief story he’d told Micah the day before. Frank would take hard-to-find bail jumpers over sicko killers, every time.

On the third floor, he resumed his grip on the baton, ready to smack Zaluski over the head if their paths happened to accidentally cross. A few doors on this floor were open, the sounds of multiple vacuum cleaners droning down the hallway.

Frank stopped at the first open door to find a woman in the same color of maid outfit holding a garbage bag in her hand. He opened his wallet and flashed his ID. “I need your help, ma’am.”

She glanced at it, and Frank let her have about half a second before he shut his wallet and slipped it back in his pocket.

“What do you need?” she said. “I’m kinda busy here.”

He ran through the description of Zaluski and his sad tale about not knowing where his friend was staying. The woman’s face remained neutral as he spilled the story. She gave no hint of empathy or understanding.

When he’d finished, she said, “fifty bucks.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on. I don’t buy your missed connection crap for a second. But I know the guy you’re talking about, and I have a good idea why you want to find him. You want me to give you a master key to his room and also keep my mouth shut? That’s gonna cost you fifty dollars.”

Frank grumbled. Fifty dollars was gas money for the trip home, but as a going rate for information, it wasn’t bad. Plus, he had a grudging respect for this woman’s business savvy.

When he handed over the money, she slipped it into the pocket of her apron. Leaned her head toward the wall. “Two rooms down. 307. That guy is a nasty, nasty jerk. If you’re here to arrest him, give him a couple licks for me, please?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

With a master room keycard in hand, Frank soft-shoed it two doors down. He unzipped the bag and removed the baton, then dropped the bag on the floor behind him. Leaned close and heard something coming from the room, low volume. Could be a person talking on the phone or could be the TV. Could be two people in there, which gave Frank some pause.

Whatever was on the other side of that door, Frank would have to open it to find out.

He raised the baton and swiped the keycard through the door.