by David Freed
“Four Charlie Lima, winds, one-six-zero at seven, cleared to land, Runway One-Two right.”
“Four Charlie Lima, cleared to land, one-two right.”
My touchdown was a thing of beauty, all modesty aside. I painted it on, cleared the active runway, came to a stop on the taxiway and contacted ground control.
“Ground, Four Charlie Lima requests taxi to transit parking.”
“Four Charlie Lima, roger. If you follow that white airport van that’s just rolling up to your two o’clock, he’ll get you where you need to go.”
“Roger.”
On the back of the van was a large sign that said, “Follow me.” Who was I to argue?
The driver was a clean-cut kid of about twenty who said his name was Jeremiah. As we drew near the parking area, he jumped out of the van and guided me with hand signals into an open parking spot. I shut down the engine. Jeremiah quickly tied down the Duck for me, then drove me to the passenger terminal. I tried to tip him a couple of bucks, but he refused them.
“Just doing my job,” Jeremiah said cheerfully.
“You should be cloned,” I said.
A black Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows was waiting in the no-parking zone as I emerged from the terminal’s main entrance. Lamont Royale got out from the driver’s side.
“How was your flight?”
“Bumpy.”
“Glad I wasn’t with you. I don’t handle turbulence too well.”
“Turbulence is organic to the human experience. We learn from the bumps to appreciate the smooth.”
“Man, that’s heavy,” Royale said. “You should think about starting your own cult.”
“Only if there are tax exemptions and groupies.”
He grinned, took my bag and deposited it in the trunk. I opened the rear passenger door. Sitting on the other side of the bench seat was Miles Zambelli.
“Welcome to Las Vegas,” he said without looking up from his smartphone.
Royale shut my door, then climbed in behind the wheel. We pulled away from the airport and out onto Rancho Drive.
“Perhaps you’d care to tell me what it is you plan to discuss with Mr. Carlisle,” Zambelli said, pecking away on his phone. “That way, he’ll know what to expect and can prepare accordingly.”
“I’d prefer it be a surprise.”
“Mr. Carlisle doesn’t care for surprises.”
“I suspect he doesn’t care for personal secretaries sticking their noses in places they don’t belong, either.”
Zambelli slowly looked up at me over the top of his John Lennon glasses with the kind of smug condescension those of the upper crust reserve for any lesser life form that dares to question their superiority.
“I’m his executive assistant,” Zambelli said. “And, just so you’re aware, there are no secrets between Mr. Carlisle and myself.”
“Well, like the Buddha said, ‘There’s a first time for everything.’”
I decided I disliked Miles Zambelli. Not because he’d somehow managed to bed my ex-wife, nor because of the possibility, however remote, that he might’ve had something to do with the death of Arlo Echevarria. Even his ingrained superior smirk didn’t do it. No, what chapped my ass about Miles Zambelli as we motored south onto the Strip was the fact that he broke wind like a dairy cow, silent and deadly, while pretending all the while that it wasn’t him baking the brownies. The limo stunk like a Chicago stockyard. I could see Royale in the rearview mirror, squinting and trying not to gag. It was 110 degrees outside. I opened my window anyway.
Flanking Las Vegas Boulevard, the sidewalks outside the casinos were a milieu of protuberant bellies and cottage-cheese thighs, of sunburned Midwestern tourists sloshing margaritas out of plastic cups and snapping digital photos of themselves in front of fake Roman statues and laughing way too hard, as if to convince themselves of all the crazy fun they were having. Everybody seemed to be talking on cell phones except the homeless people, who talked to themselves. There were young guys with tattoos of skulls and dragonflies, young women with bare midriffs and pierced belly buttons, corpulent old ladies in electric scooter chairs with unfiltered cigarettes dangling from their lips, couples in matching casino souvenir T-shirts towing matching rolling luggage. There were attractive young Asian women in black pantsuits offering free tickets to come watch C-list comedians perform in exchange for interminable time-share presentations, while sad-eyed Latino laborers patrolled seemingly every street corner, handing out pornographic color flyers to every passerby, including prepubescent children walking with their parents.
To hell with the stink inside the limo. I rolled my window back up before I could catch some disease.
Zambelli took out a square of felt from his trouser pocket, unfolded it, and carefully polished his glasses.
“I have my own theories as to what may have happened to Mr. Echevarria,” he said.
“Really? Do tell.”
“I’d urge you to check out his first wife. My understanding is that she had more than enough reason to hurt him.”
“And you know this how?”
“Let’s just say I have my sources.”
Zambelli let loose another silent stink torpedo. My eyes were stinging. We were about to have a little chat about proper etiquette and how he was either going to have to stop with the ass rumblings or I was going to have to put my foot up his rectum, when we rear-ended a black Cadillac SUV with tinted windows and chrome rims.
The noise of the crash was worse than the crash itself—the screech of brakes followed a half-second later by a jolting explosion of metal-on-metal and the tinkling cascade of broken glass. The limo bucked a couple of feet into the air like a Brahma Bull, then fell back down, bouncing on its suspension.
Zambelli stared straight ahead, blinking. He looked like he was in shock but appeared otherwise unhurt. The same could be said for Royale. The steering wheel airbag had deployed. Steam spewed from the limo’s crumpled hood.
“Everybody OK?”
“I’m fine,” Zambelli said.
“It wasn’t my fault.” Royale said. “The guy stopped short.”
I undid my seatbelt and got out.
The other driver was already surveying the damage. The rear end of his SUV was stove in like an empty Budweiser can. Pieces of bumper and other debris littered the street. He circled and paced and kept shouting, “Look at my ride!”
He was about five-nine, solid and wide. Shaved skull. Baggy shorts. No shirt. No neck. Pumped pecs and grossly oversized arms— the kind you build juicing steroids. A tattooed German cross took up the whole of his upper back. Over his heart, in six-inch gothic script and surrounded by a daisy chain of intertwined ivy and little swastikas, were the letters “AB”—for Aryan Brotherhood. The dude was either an avowed white supremacist or he played one on TV.
“So,” I said, “how’s your day going otherwise?”
“What kind of stupid fucking question is that? Jesus Christ! Look at my fucking ride!” He was in a ’roid rage. His topaz eyes looked like they were about to explode out of his bullet head.
“Relax, cowboy. Insurance’ll cover it.”
“I got no insurance, fuckhead!”
“We do. Trust me, your pimpmobile will be back in shape before you know it. Better’n new. And you won’t be out a penny. The important thing is, nobody got hurt, right?”
He drew a deep breath and let it out, trying to dial down his temper. “I want a rental car while mine’s in the shop—and none of them little fuckin’ Hello Kitty Jap rides, neither.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged.”
Other cars maneuvered around us through the intersection. Two drivers rolled down their windows to holler that they’d called 911. I could hear an emergency siren in the distance.
Royale climbed out of the limo and strode over. “Why’d you stop?” he demanded of the Aryan.
“Why did I stop? I stopped because the light was yellow, asshole!”
“You stop at a red light,
not yellow.”
“Maybe in Africa.”
“I’m not African, motherfucker. I’m American!”
“Who you calling a motherfucker, you little spade faggot!”
They grappled. The skinhead grabbed a handful of Lamont Royale’s shirt and was about to slam him face-first into the side of the SUV, when I hooked his arm and flipped him over my left thigh, judo-style. He landed on his face, scraping his forehead bloody. Bits of gravel stuck to the wound. He bounced to his feet and flicked open a switchblade.
“You just made the worst mistake of your life,” he snarled.
“If you only knew how many mistakes I’ve made in life, Adolf, I’m confident you’d retract that statement.”
“Fuck you.”
He lunged. I sidestepped the blade, snatched his hand, then twisted it back and away from his body, splintering the joint with an audible snap. A deceptively benign sound, I thought. Like Mrs. Schmulowitz clicking her tongue. He dropped the knife and rolled around on the street, clutching his broken wrist and writhing in agony.
“You’ll pay for this! I’m suing your ass! You hear me?”
I picked up the knife, retracted the blade, and put it in my pocket. I could have lectured him on the notion that suffering is really payback for our own bad deeds, and that I would probably be repaid with excellent karma for putting down a racist puke like him. But I didn’t. It probably wouldn’t have done any good anyway.
“Thanks, man,” Lamont Royale said. “I owe you one.”
“My good deed for the day,” I said.
A fire engine and paramedic unit rolled up. Zambelli walked over, looking like some NASCAR fan who’d just witnessed a spectacular crash, his expression one of horror and rapture.
“You totally owned that guy,” he said.
“I’m just glad you had my back.”
I doubted my sarcasm was lost on him. The man went to Harvard.
TEN
Gil Carlisle’s 14,000-square foot penthouse occupied the top three floors of a fifty-four-story high-rise one block off the Las Vegas strip and a thousand light years from the tumblin’ tumble-weeds of west Texas where he’d grown up. Cut-crystal chandeliers hung from twenty-three-foot ceilings. There were fragrantly fresh gardenias in Waterford vases, and a circular stairway hewn from solid French limestone. There was Frank the bodyguard, standing watch near the private elevator where my ex-father-in-law greeted me.
“Seven bathrooms, seven bidets,” Carlisle observed proudly with a sweep of his hand as he walked me into the living room. “Hell, I didn’t even know what a bidet was before I bought the place.Y’all want something to drink? An Arnold Palmer, some lemonade or something? Mr. Royale can whip you up anything you want.”
“Mango nectar,” I said, for the hell of it.
“On the rocks?” Royale said.
“Rocks are for cavemen.”
“Blended it is.”
He strode across the living room to a fully stocked bar that looked like it had been salvaged from the saloon scene of some Old Western movie.
“Never knew you to be a mango man,” Carlisle said.
“The Buddha was big into mangos. Tons of vitamins.”
“Makes sense.”
I had no idea whether the Buddha liked or loathed mango juice. I only asked for a glass of the stuff because the still-bitter former son-in-law in me wanted to let my still-controlling ex-father-inlaw know that I wasn’t quite as predictable as that guy who’d been only too willing a few days earlier to pocket his $25,000 check like some junkie scoring a fix.
“Yeah, Mr. Royale’s one of a kind,” Carlisle said, loud enough for Lamont to hear. “Came to work for me about six months ago. I don’t know how I ever lived without him. Cooks like a damn French chef and hits a drive 300 yards, straight as a Comanche’s arrow. He keeps giving me lessons out on the course, I’m gonna be joining the tour. Me and Tiger.”
“Luckiest day of my life, the day I went to work for Mr. Carlisle,” Royale said, slicing a fresh mango from behind the bar.
Carlisle and I sat down on a long couch covered in steer hide. He asked me if I intended to press charges against the knifewielding skinhead whose wrist I’d broken on the way in from the airport. I said I had better things to do.
Zambelli entered. “Sir, excuse my interruption. Mr. Tarasov just faxed in the draft memorandum of agreement on the Kashagan limited partnership. Everything appears to be in order.” He handed Carlisle a sheaf of documents and gave me a sideways look while Carlisle took a gold Mont Blanc fountain pen from his shirt pocket and unscrewed the cap.
I waited as Carlisle skimmed the documents and edited the partnership agreement.
“Mr. Logan was reluctant to share information with me,” Zambelli said, more to me than his boss. “He said he was concerned about confidentiality.”
“My young assistant here is chompin’ at the bit to know what you’ve learned with respect to Mr. Echevarria since we last spoke,” Carlisle said. “I’d have to say he’s not alone.”
“I’d prefer that we talk alone.”
“Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of Mr. Zambelli.”
Zambelli’s lips curled in a gloating smile.
Carlisle handed Zambelli the documents, returned the gold pen to his shirt pocket, crossed his arms and waited for me to dish.
I asked him when was the last time he’d spoken with Echevarria.
Carlisle looked away, thinking. “You know,” he said after a few seconds, “I don’t rightly remember. About a week before he passed, as best I can recall.”
“Echevarria flew to Kazakhstan a week before he died. I assume you knew that.”
Zambelli cleared his throat and pretended to sift through the signed documents, while Carlisle gazed at me a little too dispassionately. “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”
“You’re planning to do business in Kazakhstan, Echevarria goes to Kazakhstan. A week later, he’s murdered.”
Carlisle got up and looked out at the view. Through his eightyfoot expanse of greenhouse-style windows, he could take in all of downtown Las Vegas and the sunbaked wastelands of Nevada beyond.
“It’s important to know the lay of the land, who your friends and enemies are, before you start writing big checks,” he said, watching traffic crawl along on the boulevard below. “I had Arlo do some digging for me. Just to be on the safe side.”
“When you say ‘friends,’ you mean Tarasov?”
“Among others.”
“Did Echevarria turn up anything?”
“Nothing to suggest that Tarasov would do him any harm.”
“Unless, of course, Arlo did find something, and somebody took him out before he got a chance to tell you.”
“If Arlo had anything to say, I’m sure he would’ve called me.”
“You don’t call with sensitive information,” I said. “You deliver it in person.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve been watching too many spy movies, Mr. Logan,” Zambelli said.
“Who has time for movies? I’m too busy watching Dancing with the Stars.”
Carlisle turned somberly from the window. “I know that you and Arlo worked for the government in some kind of sensitive job, tracking people, whatever it was the two of you did. We had some beers once. He started telling me things he probably shouldn’t have. I hushed him up before he got too far. Never told Savannah a word of it. The point is, I hired him because he was married to my daughter and needed the work. But I can tell you one thing, beyond question: the job he did for me had nothing to do with who killed him or why.”
“Are you aware that Pavel Tarasov has been linked to Russian intelligence?”
Carlisle rubbed his eyes and ran his hand across his mouth. “Look, I have every confidence that had Arlo found out anything significant, anything at all, he would’ve let me know. Pavel Tarasov’s a good man. I’ve seen his heart. I’ll consider myself fortunate indeed to be in business with him.”
&n
bsp; “If he’s such a good man,” I said, “why did you have Echevarria investigate him?”
“Like I said. Better safe than sorry.” Carlisle crossed to the bar and poured himself a scotch.
“Why didn’t you tell me your daughter and your assistant, Mr. Zambelli, slept together?”
“That’s none of your goddamn business!” Zambelli said. He took an angry step toward me with clenched fists, then thought better of it.
“Maybe not my business,” I said, “but it is the LAPD’s business.”
“How the hell’s it their business?” Carlisle said.
“Wife has fling, husband leaves, husband turns up dead. I’m no homicide investigator, but I do believe that when they get to the ‘who done it’ list, the whole jealous lover scenario is usually right up there, no?”
“If you’re insinuating that I was somehow jealous of Mr. Echevarria, or that I had anything to do in any way with his death,” Zambelli said, “you’re sadly mistaken.”
Carlisle surveyed me coldly. “You have no right to come into my house, making bullshit insinuations like that.”
“You’re right, Gil. I probably should’ve made them at the police station.”
Carlisle’s eyes were flat hard stones. Gone was the velvet twang from his voice. “Did you tell the police what happened between Savannah and Mr. Zambelli?”
“You asked me to tell them what I knew about Echevarria. That’s what I did. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Very good,” he said, heading for the door. “I suggest you keep it that way.”
“Why don’t you want the police to know about Savannah’s affair, Gil?”
“Mr. Royale will see you back to your airplane,” Carlisle said.
He disappeared down a long hallway. The forcefulness of his stride conveyed barely bridled anger. Zambelli shot me a contemptuous look and followed after him, nearly colliding with Lamont, who swerved like a running back and somehow managed to hang on to the highball glass of mango juice he’d prepared without spilling a drop. A pink hibiscus floated on top.
