by David Freed
“Only if you like blood and gore,” I said.
She was maybe twenty-two, not unattractive in an underfed, nose ring, urban grunge kind of way. “I’m totally into blood and gore,” she said. “Seriously, I would kill to work for CSI.” She slid the faxed pages into a flat paper bag. “You know where else I’d like to work? Caltrans. Picking up road kill. Would that be a great job or what?”
“‘Enjoys scraping dead animals off the freeway.’ I’ve heard that’s one of eHarmony’s twenty-nine dimensions of compatibility.”
She smiled. “With tax, it comes to nineteen dollars and thirtyone cents.”
I gave her a twenty and she handed me my change, accidentally dropping a quarter on the floor.
“Oops. Sorry about that.” Her Kinko’s polo shirt hiked a few inches above her waistline as she stooped to pick up the coin, exposing what looked like a bowl of fruit inked across the small of her back.
They must’ve passed some new law. Every woman in California under the age of twenty-five is now required to visit her local tattoo parlor so that some sleazoid can etch a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling just north of her butt crack and call it art.
Like a bumper sticker on a Bentley, I thought, trying not to stare.
She handed me the quarter and my receipt. I said I’d let her know if I heard about any vacancies in the field of dead animal retrieval. She thanked me like she meant it.
A block down the street was a coffee shop. The barista working the counter was all pimples and puka necklace. I ordered a cup of black coffee to go. Not a grande Chai Creme Frappuccino. Not a skinny Caramel Macchiato with soy milk. A cup of coffee. Black. To go. The extraordinarily unusual nature of my order seemed to throw him.
“That’s a first,” he said. “Could I get a name?”
“Lord Emilio Fishbinder, member of Parliament.”
He scrawled something with a Sharpie on a wax paper cup and said, “Next in line.”
I waited. The place featured the usual collection of office workers reluctant to return to their desks, college girls commiserating about their loser boyfriends, and a paunchy Hemingway wannabe pecking away on his laptop, trying hard to appear deep in creative thought.
“Order ready for Lord Emilio.”
I fetched my coffee, sat down at a table outside and read Arlo Echevarria’s autopsy report.
If it’s true what your mother says, that it’s all about what a person is inside, then Arlo Echevarria was a human garbage disposal. Among the approximately 500 milliliters of partially digested contents found in his stomach, the coroner identified tortillas chips, a hot dog, peanuts, barbequed chicken, bamboo shoots, penne pasta with spinach, white rice, and what appeared to be either a Milky Way or Snickers candy bar. His blood-alcohol content registered .07 percent. No narcotics were found in his system. The autopsy also revealed that Echevarria had gone through life with an undescended testicle. Who knew?
The bullet that most likely killed him entered his body slightly above his nipples, fifteen inches below the top of his head and left of his midline. It ripped through the second intercostal space, shredded the lateral edge of his sternum, perforated the arch of his aorta, deflected one and a half inches at the junction of his left subclavian and left common carotid arteries, then punched through the upper lobe of his left lung and fractured the left aspect of his third thoracic vertebra before exiting the middle of his upper back. There was abundant gunpowder stippling around the entry wound, as well as stippling around the other two wounds to Echevarria’s torso. This meant that all three shots had been fired at a distance close enough to singe his skin through his T-shirt. Bullet fragments recovered during the autopsy were consistent with a Smith & Wesson .40-caliber, 165-grain, copper-jacketed round.
What the autopsy report told me was that whoever killed Echevarria wanted him seriously dead. It also confirmed that the killer was no pro. The oversized caliber of the murder weapon was proof alone of that. Professionals typically prefer .22-caliber pistols.A .22 is quieter, smaller, more easily concealed. Granted, a .22 slug is roughly half that of a .40-caliber round and offers considerably less stopping power, but a .22 often causes greater damage than larger bullets, with just enough power to ricochet off bones and through vital tissue, bouncing around inside the body like a pingpong ball. The professional also knows that a .22 bullet is made of soft, unjacketed lead. It deforms easily. That and the fact that it is the most common round made in America makes it virtually impossible to trace. But that wasn’t how I knew definitively that Echevarria’s murder was the work of a non-pro.
It was the location of the wounds themselves.
Firearms rarely kill instantly. Unless it’s a clean head shot, victims often are able to fight on for several seconds before succumbing to shock caused by their catastrophic loss of blood. A dying shooter can squeeze off a lot of rounds in that amount of time. The trick, then, is to place your shots in such a way that your adversary has little chance of returning fire. The technique we used in Alpha, the same technique taught to virtually all trained killers, goes by many titles—the “Mozambique Drill,” the “Rhodesian Drill,” the “Failure Drill,” “Body Armor Defeat,” the “2+1 Drill”—but it’s all essentially the same concept: two quick shots fired at the target’s center mass, or chest, followed by a deliberate third shot to the head.
I learned the method from an alcoholic, chain-smoking former Spetsnaz commando, Laz Kizlyak, who served as Alpha’s senior weapons instructor. Laz had honed his craft kidnapping and executing dissidents in Chechnya and Afghanistan before defecting to the West.
“Trauma of impact and wound channel from two shots to center mass cause reflexive nervous system to collapse ninety-six percent of time,” I remember him saying in his thick accent my first day on the range. “In other four percent, adrenaline or stimulant drugs will override reflex. This, my lovelies, is why you put third bullet in motherfucker’s brain.”
I don’t know where he got his numbers, but the man knew guns like Hef knows the female form. The only time I ever saw Laz’s hand not trembling was when it was holding a loaded weapon. He taught us to double-tap our first two shots, aiming at the target’s center, pausing a millisecond to reassess, then squeezing off the head shot, ideally between the eyes. Any higher, the bullet could deflect off skull bone. Any lower, and it was unlikely to produce the kind of catastrophic damage to the nervous system that Laz liked to call, “The gift that keeps on giving.”
We practiced shooting until the process became reflexive muscle memory. Then we practiced more. I would eventually put Laz’s lessons to good use in the field more times than I care to remember. Two quick shots to the chest, reassess, then one to the head. The industry standard.
I got good at it. Arlo Echevarria got even better.
I sipped some coffee and watched a scruffy panhandler shake down a couple of Japanese tourists too frightened to tell him no. Then I read the LAPD’s report. Every witness said they had heard a single gunshot that night, a pause, then two more shots in quick succession. All three bullets had been delivered to the torso. None to the head. Poor technique. Too much gun.
And then there was Echevarria’s own perplexing lack of defensive countermeasures. The nine-millimeter Beretta that the LAPD found wedged in the small of his back, though fully loaded, was effectively worthless. He would’ve first had to draw and chamber a round before using the weapon against his assailant—a split-second response that in a tactical environment could mean the difference between death and life. A trained hunter-killer doesn’t open his front door with such complacency to a stranger late at night in a shitty neighborhood if they legitimately fear someone is out to harm them. You come to the door with pistol in hand, ready to rock. Either Echevarria felt he had nothing to fear, or he’d simply grown complacent in his retirement. Or maybe the whiskey he’d drunk that night had dulled his instincts. I pondered the irony of it: the master caught flat-footed by some bush leaguer. It happens sometimes, I suppose.
<
br /> I got up to toss my empty coffee cup when Lamont Royale called. He said he was outside the pro shop of the Las Vegas Country Club and couldn’t talk long; Carlisle was inside, testing out new putters. Their tee time was in five minutes.
“I tried calling you back last night,” Royale said. “I heard explosions, then the line went dead.”
“I was gearing up for the Fourth of July.”
“But it’s November.”
“When you’re a true patriot, it’s never too early to celebrate the birth of our illustrious nation.”
“OK, whatever,” Royale said.
“You said last night you had some information about Echevarria?”
“Actually, it’s more about his first wife.”
Royale told me he’d overheard a heated phone conversation between Savannah and Echevarria less than a week before he died. Savannah was out visiting her father in Las Vegas. According to Royale, Echevarria’s ex-wife, Janice, had discovered a diamond ring missing from a safe deposit box. Echevarria, cheapskate that he was, had given Savannah the ring for their engagement without revealing how he’d acquired it. Janice had demanded the ring back.
“He admitted to Savannah where he got the ring, and that if his ex-wife didn’t get it back, she was going to put a contract out on him—and she had the resources to do it, too,” Royale said. “Savannah was so mad about him giving her some other woman’s ring in the first place, she threw it down the garbage disposal.”
“Did you tell the LAPD this?”
“I didn’t think it was my place, considering I was listening in on a private conversation. I don’t know whether it means anything or not. But I thought I should mention it to somebody. Whatever you do, I’d really appreciate you keeping my name out of it. I don’t want to upset Mr. Carlisle more than he already is.”
“Heaven forbid,” I said.
Savannah agreed to meet me that afternoon at a little café across the street from the Santa Monica Airport. The walls were decorated with pictures of classic airplanes and posters advertising old barnstorming movies, the kind of films in which rock-jawed flyboys in leather helmets and silk scarves always get the girl. My kind of place.
I tied down the Duck and made the three-minute walk to the restaurant.
Savannah was parked in a corner booth, behind her big designer shades.
“They make a mean mushroom burger here,” I said, sliding in.
“What’s so important, you had to see me right away?” she said.
I asked her about the diamond engagement ring.
“You flew all the way down here to ask me that?”
“You know me. Any excuse to fly.”
Savannah picked nervously at her lower lip. The busboy brought over menus and glasses of water. She waited until he moved off.
“Did Arlo tell you his ex-wife threatened to kill him?”
“He said it like it was a joke—‘She’s gonna put a contract out on me if I don’t give it back.’ I’m sure she was angry with him, just like I was. I probably said I was going to kill him, too. Heat of the moment, Logan. People say things. Arlo didn’t take any of it seriously. He knew it was just talk. Hell, I was afraid he might put a contract out on me for throwing the ring away after he told me where he got it.”
“Did you tell the police about any of this?”
“And waste their time? What for? Arlo wasn’t murdered because I threw away his ex-wife’s ring, Logan. He was murdered because of who he was, what he did. He was killed by a professional.”
I told her about reading Echevarria’s autopsy report and about the decidedly unprofessional way in which he was murdered. I said there was always a possibility the shooter had tried to look amateurish on purpose, to throw investigators off his trail, but that I doubted it.
“The killer didn’t conform to modern shooting doctrine,” I said.
“You worked in marketing. What would you know about ‘modern shooting doctrine’?”
“I read a lot.”
Savannah gazed scornfully at me with her sunglasses still on. She knew better.
The waitress was about fifty or so, a bottle blonde sausaged into blue jeans that housed a pair of hips nearly wide enough to land my airplane on. Savannah said she wasn’t hungry. My aspiring Buddhist impulses urged me to go with a salad, but my nihilistic past insisted otherwise. I ordered steak fries and a mushroom cheeseburger.
“I love a man who loves his meat,” the waitress said, jotting down the order. “Name’s Honey. Lemme know if you need anything.”
Savannah watched her move off. “Honey my ass.”
“She knows a big tipper when she sees one.”
“You said you were a vegetarian.”
“I prefer to think of myself as more of a work in progress.”
“There’s this thing now, Logan, in case you haven’t heard. It’s called cholesterol.”
“I didn’t know you still cared.”
“Yeah? Well, maybe I do. Which is why I want you to stop.”
“We’re not married anymore, Savannah. If I want a mushroom cheeseburger, I’ll order a mushroom cheeseburger.”
“That’s not what I meant.” A helicopter flew low overhead, its engine rattling the restaurant like a minor temblor. Savannah waited. Then she said quietly, “I think my father may know something about Arlo’s murder.”
“What makes you think that?”
She shook her head, done talking about it. She took off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. They were rimmed red from crying.
“What’s wrong, Savannah?”
She sipped some water and put her sunglasses back on. “Had I known what I was getting you into, I never would’ve asked you,” she said. “Whatever my father paid you, I’ll double it. I just want you to go home. Forget about Arlo. Forget all about this.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. It’s easy. Just get back in your airplane and go.”
I couldn’t think of anything to tell her but the truth.
“Arlo saved my life once. I owe him at least this much.”
We were on Mindanao, the southern part facing the Sulu archipelago arching toward Malaysia. Negotiations between the
Moros and the government had broken down the week before. The Islamic Liberation Front was attacking government forces. Our mission was to kill every senior Moro leader we encountered. Through the palms fronting the shoreline outside Zamboanga City, I watched just after sundown as native fishermen in outrigger canoes cast their nets into a placid sea for sardines and eel, as they had done for hundreds of years. I was standing on a low bluff, the view reminding me of some South Pacific landscape Gauguin might’ve painted, when the first RPG came whooshing in. The warhead would’ve struck me square had Echevarria not tackled me a half-second before it hit. But I couldn’t tell that to his widow, my ex-wife. I’d sworn an oath. Some bonds are stronger than those between a man and a woman. That’s just how it is.
“How did Arlo save your life?”
I lied. “We were walking to lunch one day, crossing Mason. There was a cable car coming. I looked the wrong way and didn’t see it. He pulled me back right before I got run over.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”
“Must’ve slipped my mind.”
She gazed at me for a long moment, her lips pursed. Then she said, “Next time, tell a better lie,” then left to go to the restroom.
She never came back.
“Where’d your friend go?” Honey asked with more than passing curiosity when she brought me my burger a few minutes later. “She looked like she had a lot on her mind.”
“Her husband was shot to death. She wanted me to talk to the police about what I knew. Now she thinks her father might know something. She’s afraid I might be next. But I’m not worried. Wanna know why? Because the Buddha said that if you transcend love, you transcend worry, and if you transcend worry, you transcend fear.”
Honey laughed nervously. “Makes sens
e,” she said, like she suddenly realized she was waiting on a crazy person. “Catsup, mustard?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
She never came back either.
TWELVE
The wife Arlo Echevarria abandoned to marry mine was herself remarried. Janice Echevarria’s second husband, Manila-born Harry Ramos, was a venture capitalist and liaison for several foreign-based energy companies doing business in North America. He was also nearly twenty years Janice’s junior. They lived atop Nob Hill in a Greek revival mansion with Italianate colonnades, surrounded by rolling lawns, a priceless collection of marble statuary and an enviably unobstructed view of San Francisco Bay. Janice showed me into her sun-splashed parlor. She wore an off-white pleated skirt that came midway down her calves, maroon spike pumps, a maroon cashmere turtleneck, and a sapphire brooch fat enough to choke my cat.
“How was your drive?”
“I flew up. Landed at San Carlos and rented a car.” I gave her my business card.
“That’s right. You’re a pilot.”
She gestured toward a matching pair of richly upholstered wing-back chairs. We sat. On the lamp table between us was a sterling silver coffee service with two bone china cups and a plate of chocolate-dipped biscotti.
“Cream and sugar?”
“Black, please.” I glanced around the room while she poured. “I remember when you and Arlo used to live in Oakland, up in the hills.”
Janice Ramos handed me a cup and saucer. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she said without a trace of remorse.
She had short dark hair and dark, deep-set Mediterranean eyes that flashed fire when she was angry, which was her default mode. Her narrow lips were perpetually downturned in what some men might describe as a sexy pout. Take away the mansion and fancy jewels, and she was still every inch the same shrew Echevarria traded up for my wife.
“Arlo never had any feelings for anybody other than himself,” she said, dipping a wedge of biscotti in her coffee. “You of all people should appreciate that fact. I mean, be honest, Logan. In all the time the two of you worked together, did he ever once mention me, or his son?”
