Flat Spin

by David Freed

  I held my tongue, handed over my driver’s license and insurance card, then reached into Savannah’s glove box for the current registration that I assumed would be there. I could’ve just as easily been looking for a flamethrower given the way both officers tensed, waiting.

  “You were clocked at twelve miles an hour over the posted limit,” the little cop said. “It’s also illegal to operate a motor vehicle in the state of California using a cellular telephone without a handsfree device.” He was shaking his head at me like any dummy knew better.

  I couldn’t resist. “Well,” I said, “at least you’re short and to the point.”

  He smiled wanly, then got out his ticket book and began writing.

  After I autographed the citation, I continued north on Reseda, made a left, another left, then a hard right, just as I had the night before. The addresses on Williston Drive ticked down until I came to the house with “5442” stenciled in faded black paint on the curb out front. I noticed that the Pontiac with the Denver boot and the “How’s My Driving?” bumper sticker was gone. So was the “For Sale” sign I’d seen planted in Echevarria’s front yard. Then there was the yard itself. In less than twelve hours, the patch of parched weeds had been miraculously transformed into a lawn as lush and manicured as the infield at Dodger Stadium. Thriving clumps of red and white impatiens bordered the front walk. I thought for an instant that I was having some kind of acid flashback. Only I’d never dropped acid.

  The neighborhood looked exactly as it did the night before, but Echevarria’s former residence and the grounds surrounding it were definitely different. I double-checked the address against the one Savannah had jotted down for me: “5442” painted on the curb; “5442” in black numbers nailed up diagonally beside the front door.

  The right address. Only I was on the wrong street.

  Somehow, I’d turned one block before I was supposed to. Instead of making a left onto Williston Drive, I’d turned onto Radcliff Avenue. So much for innate navigational skills. I turned The Voice back on. Two minutes later, I parked in front of Echevarria’s house.

  The real estate agent was waiting out front, pecking on an iPhone. She was squeezed into a white cotton blouse with a collar that spread over the lapels of her sunflower-yellow blazer, and a black skirt that Mr. Blackwell might’ve suggested was a tad too skimpy for a woman of such ample girth and mileage. The vanity plate on her pearl white Lexus read, “ISELL4U.”

  I turned off the ignition and got out.

  “You must be Mr. Logan.”

  “If I must.”

  “Hi, Julie Roberts, Century 21.” She shook my hand enthusiastically. “And, yes, I know it sounds like Julia Roberts, but we’re not related, though the family resemblance is undeniable. I like to tell everybody we’re sisters from other misters.”

  She waited with an expectant smile for me to respond to her over-rehearsed little quip. I tittered and apologized for being late. She handed me her business card as we walked to the front door.

  I noticed that she’d stationed a couple of potted palms on the porch to make the house look less like the hovel it was. She asked me if I was pre-qualified loan-wise. I said I was. This seemed to please her. She asked me if I was working with any other agents. I said I wasn’t. This seemed to please her even more. She put on a pair of frameless reading glasses, stooped to squint at the digital lockbox hanging from the knob, and punched in the combination. She removed a key from the box and turned the dead bolt. As she opened the front door, she looked back at me as if we were about to enter the Magic Kingdom and said, “Prepare to be ab-so-lutely amazed.”

  “Can’t wait,” I said.

  The walls were freshly whitewashed. The carpeting in the living room was camel color and new. The kitchen appliances were old but serviceable. The cabinets were knotty pine, with strap-iron pulls and matching hinges, better suited to a cabin in Yogi and Boo-Boo’s Jellystone Park than some downscale tract house in the San Fernando Valley; but who was I to play interior designer? I lived in a converted garage.

  “Isn’t the light in here just wonderful? And how about all this counter space,” the real estate agent gushed, rapping on the counter with her knuckles. “FYI, this is real Formica, not the fake stuff.”

  “Wow.”

  Nothing about the house whispered murder scene. Any trace of blood had long since been scrubbed clean. I wondered if Echevarria’s ghost roamed the place. I listened for it, but all I heard was a loud grinding sound.

  “A full one horsepower,” Julie Roberts said, turning off the garbage disposal. “Anything you want—chicken bones, peach pits. Gone. They don’t make ’em like these anymore.”

  “Remind me not to put any fingers down there.”

  She led me into the bathroom. The tile top on the vanity was mint green with a darker green bull-nose trim. The grout had gone gray with age and was streaked with rust stains. Somebody had hung a new vinyl shower curtain with lime green polka dots. The bathroom reeked of Lysol.

  “The seller, by the way, is highly motivated. He’ll entertain any reasonable offer.”

  “Why’s he selling?”

  “He owns several rentals. He’s just tired of the whole scene. Bad tenants, late payments, cats going pee-pee on everything, pardon my French—though not in this property, thank heavens, because you can never get that smell out, believe-you-me. He and his wife are retiring to Arizona. They want to be closer to the grandkids.”

  California law requires that a homeowner disclose any known problems associated with the history of the property they’re selling. A leaky roof, barking dogs, people shot to death in the entryway— all must be revealed to the prospective buyer. The owner of the house had to have known about Echevarria’s murder. Whether or not Julie Roberts did was another story. If she did, she covered it well.

  “Let me show you the backyard,” she said. “It has loads of potential.”

  The backyard was a mirror image of the front. A small patch of parched earth, only populated with vastly more dandelions. There was a chain-link fence and a gate that led to an alley. Piled against the gate were three rolls of stained carpeting and a half-dozen black Hefty bags filled with trash.

  “You could build a fantastic deck out here,” Julie Roberts said. “Put in a grill, hot tub, a privacy fence. Your own little Shangri-la. You ask me, the possibilities are ab-so-lutely endless.”

  “Ab-so-lutely.”

  I knelt, ripped open a trash bag and began sifting through the contents, much to Julie Roberts’ bewilderment.

  “May I ask what you’re doing?”

  “Recycling.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ten cents a bottle. It’s like found money.”

  The agent cleared her throat and smiled nervously. “I’m all for going green, but I, uh, really don’t believe that rummaging through the trash like you’re doing is, um, permissible.”

  “Our little secret,” I said, scavenging an empty Snapple bottle like I’d just unearthed the treasure of Sierra Madre. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  That’s when it occurred to her that she was alone, in a sketchy neighborhood, with a strange man who quite possibly was a few tacos short of a combo plate.

  “Listen, not to be rude,” she said with an anxious little chuckle, backing up toward the house, “but I really should be running along. I’ve got some, um, uh, you know, other pressing appointments. So, ah, um, feel free to, ah, you know, just look around, and uh . . . You’ve got my number. Call with any questions. Just do me a favor and lock up when you leave, OK?”

  “Will do. By the way, I loved your sister in Pretty Woman.”

  Julie Roberts didn’t hear me. She was already out of there.

  The trash bag was mostly filled with used cleaning supplies. Mop heads. Rags. An empty bleach jug. I opened the second bag. Inside were empty paint cans, plastic tray liners stiff with dried white paint, and wads of used blue masking tape. The third bag held mounds of machine-shredded paper and unopened
junk mail addressed to “Current Occupant.” There were also several mail order catalogs. One was from the “Harry and David” company. Purveyors of fruits and nuts, soliciting business in the land of fruits and nuts. I had to smile.

  The catalog was sticky with what looked and smelled like maple syrup. I was about to toss it back with the rest of the garbage and move onto the next bag when I noticed a shred of paper stuck to the back page. I peeled it free: it was a ticket stub from Turkish Airlines, a seat assignment, ripped in half. A partial name, “—mas Magnum” was printed on the remnant half—Thomas Magnum, Echevarria’s nom de guerre. All of us in Alpha used such aliases in the field—usually the names of television characters we identified with. The reasoning was, were the bad guys to know our true identities, they might just come looking for us. And so we were Matt Dillon and Maynard G. Krebs and Jim Rockford and Gomez Addams and myriad others. Buzz’s handle was Andy Sipowicz. I favored Napoleon Solo or Steve Urkel, depending on my mood.

  The date printed on the ticket stub indicated that Echevarria had flown less than a week before he died. There was a flight number: 3183.

  I called directory assistance and got a reservations number for Turkish Airlines.

  “Please listen carefully as our prompts have changed.” I punched “0.” Fifteen seconds later, I was speaking with a real live Turk.

  “Thank you for calling Turkish Airlines, a proud member of the Star Alliance. My name is Bedia. How may I assist you today?”

  “This is Thomas Magnum. I flew your airline a couple months ago. Unfortunately, United says they have no record of my having been on the flight. Unless I send them proof, they won’t credit my Mileage Plus account. Can’t you help me?”

  “I would be pleased to assist you with that, Mr. Magnum. What was the date and number of the flight?”

  I gave her the particulars. She asked me how to spell Magnum. I could hear computer keys clicking over the phone.

  “Here we are,” she said after a few seconds. “Flight 3183, originating Ataturk, Istanbul, to New York’s JFK, continuing on to Los Angeles International. I can email you a copy of the original ticket if you’d like, as well as ticket copies for any other flights you took that day.”

  “If you could check my other flights that would be great.”

  “Certainly.” More computer keys clicking. “Yes, sir. It looks like you made an earlier connection from Atyrau to Istanbul.”

  I could feel my pulse surge. “Did you say Atyrau?”

  “Yes, sir. Atyrau.”

  I told her emailed copies would not be necessary and thanked her for her time.

  After I slipped the ticket stub in my pocket, I tossed the trash bag in which I’d found it into the trunk of Savannah’s Jaguar along with another bag I’d yet to go through.

  NINE

  Savannah was sitting cross-legged on the lawn in front of her house, reading the Style section of The New York Times. She was barefoot, wearing a broad-brimmed straw sun hat, a black, formfitting leotard top, and Daisy Duke-style cutoff jeans, short enough to reveal the bottoms of her front pockets. I tried to imagine that she weighed 400 pounds, but it didn’t work.

  I popped open the trunk and hauled out the two Hefty bags I’d taken from Echevarria’s backyard.

  “What are those?”

  “What do they look like?”

  “You’re driving around with garbage bags in my Jaguar?”

  “They’re from your late husband’s house.”

  “You found something,” Savannah said, her voice rising with excitement.

  I debated telling her about the Turkish Airlines ticket, about how Echevarria had apparently visited the port city of Atyrau in Kazakhstan days before he died. Having flown in and out of Atyrau more than a few times myself on various assignments, I knew that it was the commercial airport nearest the burgeoning Kashagan oil fields, where Savannah’s father had prospective business interests with the men I’d lunched with in El Molino. It had to have been more than happenstance, Echevarria traveling through Atyrau just before he was murdered. Could be Buzz was correct. Could be Echevarria had gotten too close to Tarasov, uncovered something he shouldn’t have, and paid for it with his life. I didn’t know where the truth lay. I did, however, know that sharing what little of it I knew at that point with my ex-wife would only make it more difficult for me to explain to her the covert nature of how Echevarria and I once earned a living. I wasn’t prepared to tell her that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be.

  “What did you find?” Savannah demanded.

  I closed the trunk lid.

  “You’ve never told me anything, anyway, so why start now, right?” she said, smoldering.

  “I need somewhere to spread this stuff out,” I said.

  She huffed a sigh as if to say, “I can’t believe I’m accommodating this jerk,” then led me inside.

  The centerpiece of Savannah’s den was a massive walnut desk, ornately hand-carved, of German origin, was my guess. The oak plank floor played host to a room-size, antique Persian rug worth more than my airplane. Above the moss rock fireplace was a stuffed moose head, its mouth curled in a taxidermy grin, its dark, glassy eyes staring down at us dully. I nodded toward it.

  “You bag that yourself?”

  “Came with the house,” Savannah said, still steamed at me.

  Old newspapers were stacked in a brass rack beside the desk. She spread some on the rug. I dumped out both trash bags on them.

  “It’s probably pointless to ask what you’re looking for,” she said.

  “Probably.”

  She snatched up a copy of the Wall Street Journal from a mahogany side table and plopped down in an overstuffed armchair near the window, facing away from me, her naked thighs draped over the arm of the chair. I tried not to stare.

  I got down on my knees and sifted through the garbage. Cans. Bottles. Newspapers. Junk mail. Used coffee filters filled with wet grounds. Used tissues filled with who-knows-what. There was nothing to be mined in the way of potential intelligence.

  “I need to go see your father again,” I said, tossing trash back in the bags.

  Savannah put down her magazine. “This is starting to really piss me off. You tell him, but not me? My father wasn’t married to Arlo, Logan, I was.”

  “Thanks for reminding me. I’d completely forgotten.”

  She gazed up at Bullwinkle as if for divine guidance. Maybe it was the way the sunlight filtered in through the windows, but she looked different. Sadder. Definitely older.

  “I have a right to know who killed my husband.”

  “There’s nothing I can tell you, Savannah.”

  “You can, but you won’t. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “I need a ride to my plane. You don’t want to take me, I can catch a cab.”

  Savannah rubbed the back of her neck and sighed again. More than a little grudgingly, she said, “I’ll get my shoes.”

  I called Carlisle’s office in Nevada after she left the room. Lamont Royale answered the phone. I said I had some news for his boss that I needed to deliver in person. I told him I’d be at the North Las Vegas Airport in approximately three hours. Royale put me on hold. A minute later, he was back. He said he’d be waiting for me curbside when I arrived.

  “Mr. Carlisle says to tell you he’s looking forward to seeing you again, and asked that you please fly safe.”

  “I’ll try not to crash.”

  Savannah drove me to the Van Nuys Airport without a word. We pulled in outside the executive terminal. She put the car in park, then turned to face me.

  “I resent the fact you’re willing to share information with my father, but not with me.”

  “He’s paying for my services. You’re not.”

  “How can you be so cruel? We shared a bed once.”

  “It’s been a long time since we shared a bed, Savannah.”

  I grabbed my flight bag out of the backseat and got out. She looked like she was wiping her eyes as she drove aw
ay. I doubted it was the smog.

  Even at 9,500 feet, the air above the high desert northeast of Los Angeles was hot and uncomfortably bumpy. The Duck bucked the convective currents like an unbroken appaloosa. I eased the throttle back, readjusted the mixture, and rode out the thermals.

  A fly had somehow found its way inside the cockpit. It buzzed around, strafing instruments, ricocheting off the windows. I tried to feel pity for the little bastard—he’d probably been a telemarketer in a previous life—but somewhere over Hesperia, after his twentieth attempted touch-and-go on my face, I rolled up a sectional map from my flight bag and whacked him into his next plane of existence. The Buddha, who values all life, including flies and telemarketers, would not have been pleased.

  Just then, a shadow streaked across the windscreen, followed by a tremendous jolt that made the Duck pitch violently down and to the right—wake turbulence from another aircraft. Instinctively, I leveled the wings and raised the nose, my heart hammering in my ears. I should’ve never killed that fly. Forgive me, Buddha.

  “Cessna Four Charlie Lima, Joshua Center,” the controller said over my headphones, “traffic, ten o’clock, northwest bound, Predator UAV, 12,600 feet, descending.”

  Now you tell me. “Four Charlie Lima has the traffic,” I said, keying the mic.

  Ahead and to my left was a drone—an “unmanned aerial vehicle” in Air Force parlance—designed to fire laser-guided missiles at troublemakers like the late Osama bin Laden. It was twice as big as a Cessna 172, painted Air Force gray, with a bulbous nose, thin stubby wings, and an upside-down, V-shaped empennage. At that moment, in some bunker or trailer somewhere, some pilot with his hand on a joystick and his ass planted in a comfortable swivel chair, was watching a monitor and flying the UAV, sipping coffee. He probably never even saw me.

  Las Vegas Approach cleared me into the restricted Class B airspace surrounding their city, vectoring me across the airport at Henderson, then over the east end of the main runways at McCarran International, where I watched two jumbo jets on parallel approaches float toward touchdown, 500 feet below me. From there, I banked left on an assigned heading of 280 degrees, flying directly over the casinos on the Strip. Approach handed me off to the tower at North Las Vegas and the controller instructed me to enter the pattern downwind for Runway One-Two right.