by David Freed
“Anybody ever tell you you’re less than worthless?”
Kiddiot bathed himself with his tongue and ignored me like some sort of lesser life form. I turned on the TV and dialed in Animal Planet so he could watch his favorite shows, grabbed my blue, sweat-stained Air Force Academy ball cap off a hook on the back of the door, and drove to the airport.
El Molino is up the coast and inland from Rancho Bonita. As the crow flies, it’s about 115 miles. As a Cessna 172 flies, depending on winds aloft, the trip normally takes about an hour—the operative word being “normally.” That morning, the winds came screaming out of the north, bucking my little airplane all over the sky, while reducing my ground speed at times to less than fifty knots. On Highway 101, 6,500 feet beneath the Duck’s wings, I watched cars passing me like I was standing still.
Bumpy air and pathetic ground speed aside, the extra time gave me an opportunity to think. I’d had a restless night, what with the heat and Savannah’s unexpected intrusion in my life. The wee hours had been spent sweating atop the sheets and staring up at the ceiling, with memories of her coursing through my head, the soundtrack of my insomnia, an old Bob Dylan tune about switching off your emotions to cope with the loss of that special someone forever embedded on your brain.
The Buddha teaches that suffering is the essence of life, that desire is the root cause of that suffering. Get rid of that which you desire and you get rid of the suffering. Easy. And yet, as I fought the wind on my way toward El Molino that morning, I realized my desire for Savannah had never left me. I’d just learned to turn it off.
The coastal mountains north of Rancho Bonita gave way to the Agua Caliente Valley, a loose patchwork of gentle hills studded with stands of oaks and vineyards. After about fifteen minutes, Rancho Bonita Departure handed me off to Oakland Center, followed by several minutes of silence on the airwaves. I checked in to make sure the Duck’s radios were still working.
“Oakland Center, Cessna Four Charlie Lima, how do you hear?”
“Loud and clear.”
All was quiet because nobody else was stupid enough to be out flying. The high winds had grounded every other private pilot in the region. Half an hour later, I radioed Oakland to report that I had the El Molino airport in sight, fifteen miles off the nose of the plane.
“Four Charlie Lima, roger. El Molino altimeter two niner niner seven. Radar service terminated. Squawk VFR. Frequency change approved.”
“Thanks for the help. Four Charlie Lima.”
I switched over to the number-one radio to listen to the automated weather recording at the El Molino airport. The winds were 330 degrees at twenty-eight knots, gusting to thirty-five. On my number-two radio, I dialed in the airport’s common traffic area frequency to listen for other airplanes coming or going. There were none. At seven miles out, I keyed the push-to-talk mic button on my yoke.
“El Molino traffic, Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima, seven miles south of the field at 4,500 feet descending, landing Runway Thirty-One, El Molino.”
I eased back on the throttle and thumbed in a little forward trim to set up a 700 feet-per-minute descent, keeping Runway Thirty-One centered on the Duck’s nose. Off my left wingtip, about five miles away, was the tourist-friendly burg of El Molino, population 29,000, whose founding fathers made their fortunes selling tourists on the medicinal virtues of soaking in El Molino’s many hot springs and mud baths. More than a century later, with nearly 170 mostly ridiculously overpriced wineries and tasting rooms, the tourists were still being soaked.
The turbulence was severe enough that I twice smacked the top of my head on the cabin roof as I made my approach into the airport. Descending through 2,000 feet, I nearly collided with a seagull. He flashed below the Duck’s left wing close enough that I could make out the red dot at the end of his beak.
By the time I dropped down to pattern altitude, the air had tamed somewhat. The orange wind sock was standing straight out, angled off the runway by about twenty degrees. Turning final, I held my right wingtip into the wind and touched down on my upwind wheel first. A textbook crosswind landing if I do say so myself. I glanced at the clock on the instrument panel as I rolled out. It was almost twelve-thirty—nearly an hour late to my meeting with Gilbert Carlisle, thanks to Mother Nature. Nothing I could do about it now. He’d either be there or he wouldn’t.
There were abundant parking spaces across from the main terminal where the restaurant was located. The Duck, in fact, was the only plane on the ramp. I slid the gust lock into the control column on the pilot’s side, secured the nose wheel with the aluminum travel chocks I keep in the baggage compartment, and secured the tie-down chains on the underside of both wings as tight as they would go. I made sure the door was good and locked, then made for the terminal.
The tarmac was like a wind tunnel. I leaned into the blow, head down, holding onto my ball cap. My eyes burned from the gale-force winds. My shirtsleeves flapped hard against my arms. As I got closer to the terminal, I could see a man in Wrangler jeans, a blue-checked cowboy shirt with pearl snaps, and ostrich skin cowboy boots holding open the door for me.
“Get on in here before you get blowed into another area code,” Gil Carlisle said with a broad grin.
We shook hands as I slid past him into the terminal.
“I was starting to get a little worried,” he said.
“Wind held me up. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Hell, I’m just glad you could make it.”
Standing protectively close beside him was a tall, muscular Latino in his mid-thirties. Gray slacks, white shirt, the frigid scowl of an on-duty Secret Service agent. The grip of what looked like a .40-caliber Glock pistol dangled from a shoulder holster under his left arm.
“This is Frank,” Carlisle said.
“Since when did you start needing a bodyguard, Gil?”
“World’s an increasingly dangerous place, hoss. A little precaution never hurt anybody.”
Frank started to pat me down. Carlisle told him it wasn’t necessary.
“This is my former son-in-law,” he said. “I trust him implicitly.”
My former father-in-law was a stocky man with thick lips. He was all but bald the last time I saw him. But where there was once shiny pate was now a forest of luxuriant curls the color of milk chocolate, with nary a trace of gray. Carlisle noticed me noticing.
“Four bucks a graft,” he said proudly. “Hell, I could’ve damn near bought another island in the Caribbean for what the new hair ended up setting me back. I didn’t want to get ’em, but the new honey, she insisted, bless her heart. That’s the risk you take, datin’ a showgirl young enough to be your grandbaby.”
“Another risk is dying of a massive coronary.”
Gil Carlisle laughed and bear-hugged me. “It’s just damn good to see you, son. Been way too long. Hope you came hungry.”
Frank the bodyguard took up his station at the entrance of the restaurant while Carlisle led me inside. The aromas were mouth-watering. Not a whiff of burning grease like most rural airport cafés, where the menus feature dishes like “Takeoff Tacos” and “The Barnstormer” burger. The restaurant at the El Molino airport caters to gourmands regardless of their interest in aviation. The kind of place that serves up lamb noisette in a blackberry reduction sauce and Peking duck breast seared rare at thirty bucks a plate. Small and intimate, with its tablecloths and pumpkin-colored walls, the restaurant looks like it belongs on Union Square in San Francisco or overlooking Rodeo Drive, not beside some windswept runway in the middle of farm fields.
“Truth be told,” Carlisle said over his shoulder as I followed him, “it’s good you showed up a little late. We were just wrapping up our meeting.” He led me to a large round table where three men were eating lunch. “Gentlemen, I want y’all to say howdy to Mr. Cordell Logan. Used to be hitched to my daughter.”
Carlisle introduced the man nearest me as Miles Zambelli, his executive assistant and chief financial advisor. Zambelli was in his early thirt
ies. Mediterranean handsome, he wore fancy jeans and a black-striped, untucked dress shirt, tasseled loafers, rimless eyeglasses and a vague air of entitlement. He remained seated as introductions were made, eating and taking notes on a yellow legal pad, while shaking my outstretched hand with all the enthusiasm of a teenager forced to wash the dishes. His gold class ring bore the Harvard coat of arms, which explained a lot.
The others at the table stood respectfully to greet me as I approached. The taller of the two was decked out in beige golf pants and a pale yellow golf shirt, one of those fair-skinned, angularly athletic, mixed-race chaps who look good wearing anything. He was about thirty.
“Say hello to Lamont Royale,” Carlisle said. “Mr. Royale’s my right-hand man. Does my driving, helps me with my golf game and handles the cooking. Hell, if he didn’t have a damn dick, I’d marry the son of a bitch.”
“Call me Lamont, please,” Royale said, shaking my hand.
“Lamont it is.”
The other man Carlisle introduced as Pavel Tarasov, “oil broker extraordinaire.”
“Cordell Logan,” I said, “oil consumer.”
He parted his jaws, displaying a set of teeth so white against his tanned face that my eyes hurt just looking at them. I wasn’t sure if he was smiling or planning to bite me.
“I like this guy,” Tarasov said, gripping my hand firmly and a little too long, his accent faintly Russian. He had dark, intelligent eyes and black, well-barbered hair. His grooming, tailored business suit, and the $20,000 Rolex lashed to his left wrist advertised a man of assets and taste. Only his hands, meaty and speckled with scar tissue, seemed out of character with the rest of him. The kind of hands more familiar with physical labor than laboring behind a desk. Hands that had no business protruding from the starched sleeves of a white dress shirt with French cuffs and blue garnet cuff links.
An attentive waiter whose name-tag identified him as “Steve” slid a chair over for me from another table without being asked and waited for us to settle.
“Gentlemen,” Carlisle said, gesturing.
We sat.
Steve the waiter handed me a menu and asked if I’d like something to drink. The others were sharing a bottle of red wine. I myself was in a vodka martini mood. Chilled. With two fat Spanish olives. Then I remembered that I still had to fly myself home. Then I remembered that I don’t drink. I hadn’t touched a drop of liquor in seven years, ever since I’d quit working for the government.
“I’ll take an Arnie.”
“One Arnold Palmer, coming up,” Steve said, and left to go fetch my drink.
“Mr. Carlisle tells me you are crackerjack instructor pilot,” Tarasov said pleasantly.
“It keeps me off the streets.”
“When I was boy, I dreamed to fly fighter jets. The MiG, yes? But my marks in school, they were, how do you say, shit? My father, he makes with his hands the chairs, tables. Anything you want, he can make. He teaches me how to use the tools, cutting the wood. Rich people, they love my furniture. I sell to Princess Diana armoire. Chest of drawers to king of Saudi Arabia.”
“Not to brag, but I’m somewhat the fine furniture maker myself.”
“Truly?”
“Let’s just say they know me on a first-name basis at a certain Swedish furniture warehouse where, by the way, the meatballs and lingonberries are delicious.”
Lamonte Royale laughed. No one else got the joke.
“So,” I said to Tarasov, “what brings you to California?”
“Grapes,” Tarasov said, refilling his wine glass.
“Mr. Tarasov is thinking about acquiring a few vineyards,” Carlisle said. “He flew in to look over some properties. We decided El Molino would be mutually convenient for us to get together and hash out strategy on another little venture we’re considering partnering up on.” Carlisle leaned in close to me, his elbows on the table, his voice decidedly lower. “You ever hear of the Kashagan oil field?”
I hadn’t.
“In Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea,” he said. “Supposed to be the biggest find in fifty years.”
“A hundred years,” Zambelli said.
“The biggest find in history,” Tarasov said. “All we need are a few more investors, and the controlling share will be ours.”
Steve the waiter ferried my lemonade-iced tea to the table and set it down on a paper coaster. “Have you had a chance to decide?”
I pointed to what Zambelli was eating. “I’ll try some of that.”
“Pistachio-encrusted halibut,” Steve said. “Excellent choice.”
Carlisle waited until he moved off, then leaned in once more and said, “If that field comes in the way our geologists think it will, even the smallest fractional owner’ll be a billionaire. It’ll make Bill Gates look like a hobo.”
“I’m obviously in the wrong line of work,” I said, only half-kidding.
“Hell, that’s what I told my daughter when she married you,” Carlisle said, chuckling.
“What did you tell her when she married Echevarria?”
Carlisle’s smile melted. “I like you, Cordell. Always have. The day you and Savannah parted ways, I’ll tell you what, the two of us cried our eyes out like babies.”
I sipped my drink. If my former father-in-law was ill at ease revealing such personal intimacies in front of a potential business partner, he didn’t show it. Nor did they. It was Zambelli who seemed most uncomfortable with his boss’s candor.
“Mr. Carlisle,” he said, clearing his throat, “I suggest such matters might be better discussed between you and Mr. Logan in a more private setting.”
“I got nothing to hide from this man,” Carlisle said, gesturing to Tarasov. “If we’re gonna be in business together, he needs to know who I am and where I’m coming from. What you see is what you get. No more, no less.”
“Honesty in all endeavors,” Tarasov said.
Carlisle told him how the second husband of his daughter Savannah had died tragically in Los Angeles at the hands of a killer unknown. The case remained unsolved. He said he hoped to persuade Savannah’s first husband, namely me, to pass along any relevant information about Echevarria to the police, given that I had once worked for Echevarria in marketing. Carlisle said he was confident my help could make all the difference in the police solving the case.
“To truth and justice,” Tarasov said, hoisting his wine goblet.
“And the American way,” Lamont Royale added with a smile.
“Like Superman,” Tarasov said, impressed with himself that he actually got the joke.
They all clinked goblets.
“Truth, justice, and the American way,” I said, tepidly raising my glass.
I glanced over at Zambelli. His eyes never left his plate.
FIVE
I lifted off from El Molino that afternoon with a bellyful of halibut and $25,000 in my pocket, drawn on Gilbert Carlisle’s personal account at the Bank of Bimini. The money had come with one stipulation: Savannah was never to know that her father had paid me to talk to the police. I was to tell her only that I’d had a change of heart and decided to cooperate with the authorities because I realized it was the right thing to do. Or some such nonsense. Carlisle was so confident I would take his money that he’d had the cashier’s check drafted the day before we met, according to the bank time stamp on the stub.
If the LAPD knew that I’d been paid to enlighten them about what Echevarria once did for a living, they would likely dismiss my information as less than objective. Carlisle didn’t want that. Neither did I. Much as I hated to admit it, I was becoming increasingly curious about who might’ve murdered my former co-worker and romantic rival.
The list of suspects would’ve easily stretched around the block. War criminals. Cocaine kingpins. Serial killers. Traitors. Terrorists. The ones who got away. Survivors of the ones who didn’t. All would’ve had good reason to kill Echevarria, or any other former go-to guy. The problem was, they would’ve had to know his real name to find him. We
always used aliases in the field for that very reason. My gut told me that Echevarria’s death had nothing to do with his having once worked for the government. But I wasn’t being paid to play Sam Spade. I was being paid to make my ex-wife and her father happy. For $25,000, considering the delicate state of my personal finances, I’d make sure both were ecstatic.
The headwinds I fought flying north to see Carlisle shifted south and turned to quartering headwinds by the time I flew home. Typical. I climbed to 7,500 feet, then 9,500, then 11,500. There was little difference in the quality of the ride, nor in my ground speed. The air was churned up like white water on a river. I struggled to keep the Duck level and on course. By the time I landed back in Rancho Bonita, my arms felt heavy. The fingers of my left hand ached where I had gripped the yoke. I decided that whoever it was at Cessna who ruled out wing-leveling autopilots as standard equipment on 172’s should come back in the next life as a fruit fly. Not a very Zen-like thought, I realized, but if the Buddha held a pilot’s certificate, I knew he’d feel the same way.
I tied down the airplane, got in my truck and hit the freeway, driving south toward Rancho Bonita. Twelve minutes later, I was sitting in the Bank of America parking lot downtown, staring at a $25,000 cashier’s check and wrestling anew with my conscience, wondering what I was doing even thinking about depositing Carlisle’s bribe money. My phone rang. It was Savannah.
“I wanted to apologize for my behavior yesterday,” she said. “Showing up unannounced. Some of the things I said. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”
“Heat of the moment.”
“Still no excuse.”
I was quiet.
“Well, anyway,” Savannah said, “I just wanted to say how sorry I was, barging into your life like that. I won’t ever bother you again.”
“Is that a promise or a threat?”
“It’s whatever you want it to be.”
I pondered the check in my hand, tapping it against the steering wheel.
