by David Freed
I slipped the gearshift back into drive. We merged onto the freeway heading south—straight into bumper-to-bumper congestion. A traffic jam in the City of Angels. What a surprise.
Savannah looked over at me expectantly. “You said you were going to talk to the police.”
“I did.”
“And you told them about Arlo? The truth?”
“I told them what I knew.”
“Which was what?”
I gazed out the window and said nothing.
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Let it go, Savannah.”
She exhaled.
I asked where we were going.
“My place. Unless you have a problem with that.”
“Why? You mean because you used to live there with Echevarria?”
She pursed her lips. “I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable, that’s all.”
“I passed uncomfortable on my way to numb about six years ago.”
We drove in silence the rest of the way.
Savannah’s place was a two-story Tudor estate fronting a sweeping, tree-lined motor court hidden from the street behind tall hedges and an electronically controlled security gate of solid teakwood. The house was set on nearly an acre of rose gardens and rolling lawns a half-mile above Sunset Boulevard. Out back was a man-made waterfall that cascaded into a black-bottom swimming lagoon. I stooped to stir the water. It was warm as a baby’s bath.
“Daddy must’ve been in a generous mood,” I said.
Inside were antique English furnishings, hickory plank floors, cathedral ceilings, and a kitchen twice the size of my garage apartment. I tailed her upstairs and down a long hallway, to the guest suite. Handwoven tapestry panels of royal blue hung floor-to-ceiling from ten-foot-high walls. At one end of the room was a king-sized four-poster bed hewn from massive, ancient logs and covered by a purple velvet spread. The spread was embroidered with some sort of royal crest that matched the wall hangings and tasseled pillow shams piled against the headboard. At the other end of the room, beneath a pair of lace-covered windows that opened out onto the lagoon and surrounding gardens below, was an honest-to-goodness fainting couch. I couldn’t decide if I’d arrived on the set of Camelot or Gone with the Wind.
“This is where you sleep,” Savannah said.
“Where do you sleep?”
She looked at me with something approaching disgust.
“Those days are long gone, Logan.”
I tossed my flight bag onto King Arthur’s bed. “For your information, Savannah, I’m not interested in sleeping with you. You’re a grieving widow. I respect that, even if I didn’t respect the worthless piece of crap you’re grieving for. So you can just chill.”
She let go a small laugh like we both knew I couldn’t possibly be serious about not wanting to bed her. Then she realized that my disinterest seemed genuine. A glint of disappointment flickered in her eyes.
“My apologies if I presumed things incorrectly,” she said.
“I need to make a few calls.”
“I’ll fix us some dinner. I have some nice salmon I can grill. You do eat salmon, don’t you?”
“You’re telling me you don’t have a chef? Place like this always has a chef. Butler, too. And a masseuse—at least one on call. I mean, what’s the point of conspicuous wealth if you can’t enjoy a few slaves, right?”
Savannah’s eyes narrowed. “Forget the salmon. We’ll be having mac ’n’ cheese.” She turned on her heel and left.
I shut the door and called Mrs. Schmulowitz. Would she mind feeding Kiddiot while I was away?
“How long you gone for, Bubeleh?” “A few days at most.”
“What do I feed him?”
“On the shelf above my bed. There are some cans of cat food, all different flavors.”
“Which ones does he prefer?”
“It doesn’t matter, Mrs. Schmulowitz. He won’t eat any of them.”
“He won’t eat them but you keep feeding them to him? That’s the most meshuggeneh thing I ever heard, because, I mean, let’s face it, my God, he’s positively portly. He’s the William Shatner of cats— who, by the way, is a member of my tribe. He must be eating something, this cat of yours.”
“If I knew the answer to that, Mrs. Schmulowitz, I’d know the answer to life itself.”
“I’ll make him a nice brisket. Nobody turns their nose up at my brisket, not even persnickety cats.”
“You’re a saint, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”
“Wrong religion, kiddo.” She hung up.
My next call was to an old friend I’ll refer to as “Buzz” who works counterterrorism at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The DIA is the American military’s very own in-house CIA. Most Americans have never heard of it. DIA employees would have it no other way. Headquartered at both the Pentagon and across the Potomac River in a sprawling, highly secure building that resembles a giant silver aircraft carrier, it is the DIA that gathers and analyzes classified information to produce the actionable intelligence that the military’s door-kickers rely on to bring terrorists to justice. Few DIA analysts look like what Hollywood would have you believe such spooks look like. They resemble librarians and community college professors, a decidedly academic bunch given to thick glasses and trousers that are too short, who toil at encrypted computers in secure, windowless offices, sipping coffee from mugs adorned with the Liberty Bell and patriotic idioms like, “These colors don’t run.” Buzz favored a mug that said “What SUV Would Jesus Drive?” On it was a drawing of the Messiah cruising the freeway in a Hummer, elbow crooked out the window like some long-haul trucker, holy hair billowing in the wind. When a particularly pious co-worker took exception to Buzz’s blasphemy, their mutual supervisor, an avid golfer, urged Buzz to find himself another, less sacrilegious vessel for his coffee. So Buzz did. His new mug said, “Golfers have tiny balls.”
“Allahu akbar,” Buzz grunted when I called. “How’s your scrotum?”
“I wouldn’t know. It’s been awhile since I used it.”
“Join the club. When’re you coming back to the dark side? Our little G-WOT just isn’t the same without you.”
“I suspect the global war on terror is doing just fine without me,” I said. “Besides, you’re the one who’s indispensable.”
“And if you believe that, I got some swamp land I wanna sell you. Hell, I envy your shit, Logan. I’d pull the pin, too, if I could. Go sit on a beach somewhere, chugging Coronas and making fun of the touristas all day. But my kid’s got this crazy notion I’m supposed to pay his way through law school. So here I sit, saving the planet from tyranny, not to mention invasion from outer space. I haven’t had a fucking day off in six weeks.”
“Invasion from outer space?”
“Need-to-know basis. I’d tell you, but then, well, you know . . .”
“Oldest line in the book, Buzz.”
“Cut me some slack, Logan. I’m a burned-out, underpaid civil servant.”
We went way back, Buzz and I. One of the original go-to guys, he’d been there and done that a hundredfold by the time I clocked in at Alpha. Twice he’d been wounded on missions, the last time in Libya. Bleeding from just about everywhere from a rocket-propelled grenade that had exploded five feet away, Buzz ran down the terrorist who’d fired it at him and blew off the back of his head with a short-barreled, pistol-grip shotgun that Buzz called “The Bitch.” Only afterward did he realize that the terrorist was an eleven-year-old boy. Fragments from the RPG eventually claimed Buzz’s right eye, while recurrent nightmares of having killed a child robbed him of the desire to pull the trigger on anyone else ever again. He was assigned desk duty. By the time I arrived at Alpha, Buzz had built a network of personal contacts within the spook community so comprehensive, it had acquired its own acronym, BIA—the Buzz Intelligence Agency.
I asked him if he’d heard about what had happened to Echevarria, knowing that he undoubtedly possessed far more details than I did.
“I heard,” Buzz said, “poor bastard.”
“Anything you can enlighten me with?”
“Stand by one.”
I could hear him get up from his desk to go close his office door. Then he was back.
“He was doing contract work for folks across the river,” Buzz said. “Job apps, backgrounders, non-class shit is what I heard.”
“You think what happened to him was job-related?”
“That’s been knocked down. At least in this shop. I can’t speak for the shop he was freelancing for. They’ve still got an open file on him. I know that much. He and your old lady split. You heard that, right?”
“She told me. Actually, I’ve gotten sort of peripherally involved in the case, asking around, talking to a few people.”
“About what happened to Arlo, you mean?” “Roger that.”
“Jesus, Logan, the broad dumps you like a hot rock and now you’re holding her fuckin’ hand? Is that what happens? You move out there to the People’s Republic of California, next thing you know, you’re joining some masochist cult.”
“I needed the cash.”
“I guess you gotta do what you gotta do, eh?” Buzz said. “Look, I’m not saying what happened to Echevarria made my day, but I can’t say I wasn’t all that broke up when I heard about it, either. The guy was a dirtbag, going after that gal of yours. Last time I had anything halfway good to say about him, you and her were still together. I always thought that was a pretty shitty thing he did.”
I thanked Buzz for his loyalty and asked him to keep me posted on anything else he might pick up through the grapevine on Echevarria’s death. He assured me he’d call, but only if I agreed to buy him a six-pack the next time we crossed paths. I promised him a case.
That Echevarria was contracting for the CIA—“folks across the river,” as Buzz put it—wasn’t surprising. A lot of pensioners double dip as independent contractors after retiring from any number of federal intelligence organizations. What was surprising was that the CIA was actively investigating the murder. Typically, the agency let sleeping dogs lie. Probing the suspicious death of a covert operative can make it easier for foreign intelligence agents to confirm that the operative did, in fact, have ties to Langley. Other operators could be compromised as a result, along with the methods they used to carry out their clandestine missions. Whole spy networks have been unraveled virtually overnight in such fashion, their members rounded up and summarily shot.
Buzz had indicated that Echevarria was doing routine work for the CIA when he died, performing non-classified background checks on job applicants. Hardly cloak and dagger stuff. Why, then, would the agency continue probing his death when the LAPD’s investigation remained ongoing? There had to be something else to it.
I considered calling some of my other former colleagues from Alpha to see what they might know. But even if they knew anything, I knew they wouldn’t tell me. I’d jumped ship, left them in my wake. As far as they were all concerned, I was just another civilian puke.
“What’s the deal with place mats?”
“They keep food off the table. Plus, they look nice.”
“Why do they always have to match the napkins?”
“Because they just do,” Savannah said. “Now eat.”
She set a steaming plate of macaroni and cheese down on the plum-colored place mat in front of me, which matched the plumcolored linen napkin on my lap. Along with the mac ’n’ cheese came tomato wedges on the side, artfully arranged, topped with fresh-ground pepper.
I was sitting in a corner nook of Savannah’s kitchen. The table and benches were made of wormwood. There was a bay window. The view was of the black-bottom pool and the green Hollywood hills beyond.
“Nice crib.”
“Remember that little condo near Golden Gate Park, right after we got married? I always did like that place,” Savannah said.
I remembered. Best time of my life. “Macaroni needs salt,” I said.
She grabbed a salt mill from the cooktop and a plate for herself. On the table were two crystal wine stems and an uncorked bottle of eight-year-old Petite Sirah from some vineyard in the Napa Valley that I probably would’ve been impressed by had I known the first thing about vino. She took a seat and poured me a glass without asking.
“Forgot the salad.”
She slid out from the bench and crossed the twenty feet to the refrigerator, a massive, industrial-looking monster with stainless-steel doors that seemed out of place with the plank floors and antiquewhite cabinets. She got out a large blue ceramic bowl and brought it back to the table along with a set of silver tongs. The salad was spinach leaves topped with crescent moons of fresh avocado slices and finished with a raspberry vinaigrette. A salad for girls.
“Why would Arlo willingly move out of a palace like this?”
“Give me your plate.”
“The question still stands, Savannah. Why did he leave you?”
She paused, my plate in one hand, the salad tongs in the other. I waited.
“Arlo, he, um, he found out that I had . . .” She cleared her throat and avoided my eyes. “That I had slept with someone else.”
“You cheated on him?”
“It was a mistake.”
I felt a sudden surge of moral righteousness, even if I had no right to.
“Was he a flight attendant?”
“Go to hell, Logan.”
She dumped the tongs in the salad bowl and strode to the sink, her back turned to me, leaning on the polished granite countertop with both hands. Her shoulders shuddered almost imperceptibly. I could tell she was crying.
“Did you tell the police about this mistake of yours?”
“It had nothing to do with what happened to Arlo.”
“How do you know that?”
She turned back toward me, her cheeks wet with tears. “It was a stupid thing to do. It meant nothing, OK?—nothing.”
“Obviously, it meant something to Arlo.”
Savannah sighed and swiped at her eyes with both hands. “I suppose I deserved that,” she said.
She seemed almost eager to tell me about how the “mistake” happened, as if by describing the spontaneous nature of it, she could explain away the guilt she obviously still carried as a result of it. Her father, she said, had invited Arlo and her out for the weekend to Palm Springs where he was attending a meeting with some potential investors. She and Arlo had been arguing.
“What were you arguing about?”
“He wanted to stay home and watch a baseball game or something. I don’t really remember.”
“So you went to Palm Springs alone.”
Savannah shrugged. “There was this guy at dinner. I had a little too much to drink. We ended up in his room. I told him the next day never to call me and he never did. That was all it was. One night. End of story.”
“Who was the guy?”
“It doesn’t matter. Some guy, that’s all.”
“You had a fling. You ended it. Maybe the guy gets jealous. Decides he wants you all to himself. Next thing you know, Arlo’s in an urn on your mantle.”
“It wasn’t like that, Logan. It wasn’t anything other than what it was. Which was nothing.”
“Who was he, Savannah?”
“I told you! Some guy. It had nothing to do with what happened to Arlo.”
“Since when did you become a homicide detective?”
Savannah’s mouth parted as she looked at me, like she’d finally figured something out.
“You want to know who I slept with because deep down, it bothers you, knowing the train left the station and you weren’t the last stop. Admit it, Logan. You’re getting some sort of perverse pleasure out of this.”
Perverse pleasure? More like masochistic torture. I dabbed my mouth with my napkin that matched my place mat.
“Thanks for the chow,” I said. “I’m going for a swim.”
EIGHT
I hadn’t thought to bring trunks, so I swam in my boxers.
The water in Savannah’s lagoon was wet, warm sunshine. I could see her watching me through the kitchen window.
Some people swim because they like the exercise. Me? I swim, on those rare occasions when I do swim, because it makes me feel like Flipper. Granted, nobody really knows how a dolphin genuinely feels except, perhaps, another dolphin. But I never saw Flipper when he wasn’t smiling. Jumping through flaming hoops, head-butting SCUBA-diving criminals. Saving Ranger Ricks from peril. Always with a smile. We should all be so perpetually cheery. At some point, as I worked on my porpoise kick, Savannah left a couple of plush white bath towels on a chaise lounge poolside.
I was taking a hot shower an hour later when she came storming into the guest bathroom.
“You want to know who he was? Miles Zambelli. That was his name. The guy I slept with. Like it really matters. There. You satisfied now? You expect me to act like I have something to be ashamed of, and I don’t.”
The shower doors were fogged with steam. I said, “Try knocking next time.”
“He didn’t mean anything to me, Logan. And I didn’t mean anything to him. And I resent the hell out of you demanding that I somehow have to account to you for my personal life!”
“Your father’s legal advisor. That Miles Zambelli? That’s who your ‘mistake’ was?”
Savannah blinked, stunned that I would know.
“Thirty. Dark hair. John Lennon glasses. Reeks of Ivy League.” I slid open the shower door wide enough as modesty would allow—no sense in showing her all the splendor she’d been missing—and grabbed a towel off a wall hook. “The age difference there is what, fifteen years? Rather cougar-ish, wouldn’t you say, Savannah?”
“How do you know Zambelli?”
“I met him yesterday.”
“You met him yesterday? You want to tell me how that happened?”
“Not especially, no.”
I wrapped the towel around my waist and crossed to the vanity, a converted antique sideboard, French mahogany, with double porcelain sinks and a beveled mirror. I wiped the steam off the glass and combed my hair. Savannah stood behind me, her expression one of incredulity.
“My father came to see you. That’s why you talked to the police, isn’t it?”
