Flat Spin

by David Freed

  “You want to put me on television?”

  Mrs. Schmulowitz beamed like Mr. DeMille had just called for her close-up. She said she needed to go put on something more appropriate if she was going to appear on camera, and breathlessly hurried inside.

  I waited in the hallway outside her bedroom while she changed out of her sports bra. She told me how she long ago dreamed of a career as a stage actress, but shelved her budding Broadway ambitions when she married and became a mother. Now, seven decades later, here she was again, standing at the precipice of fame.

  “I’m sorry all your stuff got charbroiled,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, “but that cockamamie garage burning down could be the best thing that’s happened to me in years. It just goes to show you, Bubeleh, there’s a reason for everything.”

  The number of rungs on the ladder of celebrity between the Great White Way and an appearance on Rancho Bonita’s local five o’clock news could be measured in light-years, but who was I to burst an old lady’s bubble? I asked her for a favor. The reporter, I said, would likely inquire as to why anyone would’ve wanted to burn down the garage. Did it have something to do with her tenant? What did he do for a living? Who did he know who might’ve done such a horrible thing? It was the reporter’s job to ask questions. The best thing to do, I suggested, was to be polite in response but vague, to tell Action News that she wasn’t really at liberty to discuss specifics, and to refer the reporter instead to the police.

  Mrs. Schmulowitz emerged from her closet in shiny white boots and a sparkly red leotard with a matching sparkly skirt, like something a baton twirler might’ve worn during halftime at the Rose Bowl, circa 1950.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me, Bubeleh,” she said, admiring herself in a full-length mirror hanging from the back of her bedroom door, “but don’t you worry, your secret, whatever it is, is safe with me. Loose lips sink ships. You sure you don’t want to sleep on my sofa until you can find somewhere else?”

  “That’s Plan B. I’ll let you know if Plan A doesn’t fly. But thanks, in any case, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

  A sad thought came to her. She turned slowly from the mirror to face me. “If you go, who will I watch football with on Monday nights? Who will I cook brisket for?”

  “You’re not getting rid of me that easy. You’ll still see me on Mondays. Giants, baby, all the way.”

  Mrs. Schmulowitz patted me on the cheek, relieved, then turned back to the mirror.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think your star on the Walk of Fame awaits.”

  She blew me a kiss and strode outside in her baton twirler outfit to meet her adoring public.

  I called the number on the business card she’d given me from Detective Ostrow of the Rancho Bonita Police Department. Ostrow’s machine answered.

  “Hi, this is Kyle Ostrow. I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message. If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 9-1-1.”

  He sounded like he was in his twenties. Laid-back California surfer-dude inflection. I said why I was calling and left my cell number. My next call was to Savannah. She didn’t answer, either. After the beep, I said, “It’s me. I’m returning your car.”

  Nobody followed me down to LA.

  Savannah wasn’t home. Her housekeeper, Alameda, informed me through the speaker box at the security gate that the lady of the house had taken a taxi to go counsel a client. Alameda wasn’t sure when she’d be home. I told her I’d be back.

  The “Find Shopping” feature on the Jaguar’s dash-mounted GPS guided me out of the Hollywood Hills, past the CBS studios, and down to the flats of Los Angeles’ Fairfax District, to a Kmart on 3rd Street. Into my shopping cart I tossed a six-pack of boxer shorts made in China, a twelve-pack of crew socks made in Costa Rica, three short-sleeve polo shirts made in Vietnam, two pairs of cargo pants and a pair of jeans made in Malaysia, a gray pullover fleece, also from Malaysia, about a month’s supply of toothpaste, mouthwash, a comb, deodorant and razors, and a medium-size Little Caesars vegetarian pizza from the kiosk near the store’s entrance. As I was loading my toiletries and new wardrobe into the trunk of Savannah’s Jaguar, I realized I’d forgotten a toothbrush.

  I went back inside, picked out a blue toothbrush with one of those rubber gum massagers that I can never figure out how to use correctly, and walked to the check-out counter. My phone rang while I stood in line.

  “Mr. Logan, hey, what’s up? This is Detective Kyle Ostrow, Rancho Bonita Police Department. Got a sec?”

  “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “Well, sir, as I’m sure you’re aware by now, your apartment got burned pretty bad. We’re looking at it as a possible arson.”

  “So I heard.”

  Forensics, Ostrow said, confirmed that someone had lobbed in a makeshift firebomb. Gasoline had been used as the accelerant. He asked if I knew of anyone who would’ve wanted to do me harm. I suggested he contact Czarnek at the LAPD who could fill him in on the whole story.

  “What story would that be?”

  “The one I’d prefer not having to spend the next twenty minutes rehashing when Detective Czarnek can provide you all the pertinent details.”

  “I’m just trying to help, Mr. Logan. I’m on your side.”

  One must be nicer to his fellow human beings if one hopes to return in the next life as something other than a telemarketer or a snail. An earnest, hardworking cop like Ostrow didn’t need another impertinent asshole giving him grief, I realized, so I offered him the Cliffs-Notes version of my resume. About doing things to bad people in the name of national security. About Echevarria’s murder. About the bomb inside Bondarenko’s chest. About being chased on the ground and, while I couldn’t prove it, in the air.

  “Wow,” is all Detective Ostrow could say when I was finished.

  I gave him Czarnek’s number and signed off.

  My fellow Kmart shoppers with whom I’d been waiting in the check-out line avoided eye contact with me. Even though I’d lowered my voice, they had all apparently overheard my conversation with Ostrow. And not only that. I could feel a breeze on the small of my back—my shirt had hiked up, probably when I’d stooped to load Savannah’s trunk in the parking lot. The butt of my revolver was protruding from my waistband for all to see. I casually pulled down my shirt.

  A biker chick in line directly behind me—waiting to buy a cartload of coloring books, bath towels, and a new George Foreman grill—glanced anxiously at the uniformed rent-a-cop standing guard near the entrance. The guard was scraping his fingernails with a penknife. He looked old enough to be Mrs. Schmulowitz’s father.

  “I’m auditioning for a part on CSI Miami,” I explained. “I play a retired government hit man. Could be my big break.”

  You could tell by their lack of response and the way they avoided my eyes that they feared me. Some men like that feeling, the power of it. I never have. Even when I was with Alpha, when survival depended on exercising such power, I did so only because I had to, not because I wanted to. There’s a difference.

  I made some lame excuse about forgetting to buy floss and retreated from the check-out line, ditched the toothbrush, and walked past the security guard, out of the store. He never looked up from his fingernails.

  “Somebody burned down your apartment? Logan, my God.”

  Savannah bit her lip. She said she hoped the fire had nothing to do with her having dragged me into the investigation of Echevarria’s murder, but that she feared there was a correlation.

  I was too busy devouring my Kmart pizza over her kitchen sink to offer details about the fire that I’m sure she wanted to hear. Nor did I much feel like cluing her in about how my pilot’s license had been lifted by the feds. So I just ate.

  “You’re being uncouth,” Savannah said.

  “Au contraire. I’m being green. No washing of extraneous dishes. No wasting of water. Friend of the planet.”

  “That’s right. You’re Buddhist now. I forgot.” She pi
cked a mushroom off my pizza without asking my permission and ate it.

  “Help yourself,” I said with some sarcasm.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  She grabbed up a slice and ate over the sink with me. I wasn’t going to make an issue of it. She was, after all, letting me stay at her house until I could find more permanent digs. I had accepted reluctantly. It was either that or Mrs. Schmulowitz’s itchy sofa.

  “I got a call today from your father’s attorney,” I said. “I didn’t call him back. You wouldn’t happen to know what’s up with that, would you?”

  “My father and I aren’t speaking at the moment,” Savannah said. “He’s mad at me. He’s convinced he made a major mistake, asking you to go to the police about Arlo.”

  “He wouldn’t have asked me if you hadn’t asked first.”

  Savannah was looking at me and I was looking at her, and what was not said between us in that moment could’ve filled an entire shelf of self-help books about longing and coping with loss and how to get laid. That was my take on it, anyway. Who knows what she was really thinking?

  “I’m going to bed,” Savannah said, wiping her mouth with a paper towel. “You can turn off the lights when you’re done down here.”

  There was a small rip in the left seat of her Levi’s through which I observed flawless skin. No panties. I tried not to stare.

  “You got an extra toothbrush I can borrow?”

  “Hallway closet. Bottom drawer.”

  “Thanks.”

  A week earlier, I’d been a humble flight instructor, content, for the most part, to put the past behind me and almost pay my bills. Now here I was, at my ex-wife’s mercy, bunking in her guest room and having to ask her for a goddamn toothbrush because mine had burned up along with virtually everything else I owned. I swore that come morning, I would leave and never look back. Screw her. Screw Echevarria. Screw it all. Maybe I’d fly up to British Columbia, slap a couple of pontoons on the Duck, and make a good living shuttling salmon fishermen in and out of the bush. Or make my way down to the Caribbean and run air charters in and out of Barbados. Bikinis and margaritas. A pilot could get used to that. Yeah, come morning, I told myself, I’d be gone like a hawk on the wing. Then I remembered: I was officially grounded.

  Some days you’re the kitten, some days you’re the lawnmower.

  I turned off the kitchen lights and ate what was left of my pizza in the dark.

  NINETEEN

  The sun was not quite up and neither was I when Czarnek called me the next morning to let me know that Detective Ostrow from Rancho Bonita PD had called, told him that my apartment had been bombed, and wanted to compare notes. Like Ostrow, Czarnek could barely contain his glee. Most of the killings he investigated, he said, were pathetically ordinary. Gang-related drive-bys, jealous control freaks strangling their girlfriends, scorned wives stabbing their cheating husbands with kitchen knives or running them over with the family wagon. Same old, same old. But this, he said, this was something gloriously different. Echevarria’s murder was rapidly turning into the makings of a by-God international conspiracy.

  “It’s like eating cheeseburgers every day for lunch,” he said. “Then one day, presto, it’s empanadas with fresh pico de gallo.”

  Food analogies aside, Czarnek said he couldn’t divulge what progress he’d made in the case since we’d spoken last, given the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation, then proceeded to do just that. He was too pumped not to.

  According to Czarnek, the late Gennady Bondarenko had been moonlighting as a consultant—a fixer, essentially—for an LA-based consortium of Russian expatriates eager to stake oil leases in Kazakhstan. The consortium would’ve found itself in direct competition with Gil Carlisle and Pavel Tarasov for the very same leases. The LAPD was working the theory that Bondarenko’s consortium, aware that Echevarria was snooping around in Kazakhstan on behalf of Carlisle, had him killed to deter Carlisle’s and Tarasov’s business interests there. Bondarenko, in turn, had been murdered to derail the consortium’s ambitions. A homicidal tit-for-tat.

  The particularly brutal manner of Bondarenko’s death, Czarnek said, suggested the handiwork of any number of Russian freelancers now living in Southern California. Many were trained killers who boasted of current or former ties to the Kremlin. Czarnek, his partner and a handful of Russian-speaking LAPD detectives who’d been brought in on the case as part of a task force had identified more than twenty viable culprits in Bondarenko’s murder, though none specifically in Echevarria’s.

  “The same .40-caliber pistol was used in both homicides,” Czarnek said. “All we have to do is find the weapon and it’s two for the price of one.”

  “Here’s a crazy thought: what if Carlisle hired Micah Echevarria to kill Bondarenko? After all, the kid blew away his own father. How hard could it be to shoot a total stranger in the head, saw off his hands and set him on fire?”

  Czarnek knew I was yanking his chain.

  “We’re not barking up that tree right at present,” he said.

  “So, you’re saying the kid’s not a suspect?”

  “Sometimes, when you try something on it fits, sometimes it doesn’t,” Czarnek said.

  “I’ll let him know he’s out of the running for Miss Congeniality. What about Miles Zambelli?”

  “Who?”

  “Miles Zambelli. Carlisle’s personal assistant.”

  “The assistant. Yeah, we took a look at him, too. We got multiple wits that put him at some conference in London the night Echevarria got hit. Guy’s got a solid alibi and no rap sheet. Not so much as a parking ticket.”

  The same, Czarnek said, was true of Janet Echevarria’s second husband, Henry Ramos. Why Ramos had paid Bondarenko a visit shortly before his death remained unknown. Detectives were planning to question him upon his return from the business trip to Kazakhstan.

  I told Czarnek what Micah Echevarria had said about his father planning to attend the funeral of a friend in Arizona, and how I believed that friend to be former Alpha member Robbie Emerson whose wife was convinced that he hadn’t killed himself, despite a gun and note having been recovered at the scene.

  “If I had a dime for every sobbing widow convinced her husband didn’t shoot himself and got whacked,” Czarnek said, “I’d be living the good life up in Tahoe. I’m sure the local cops checked it out.”

  “You don’t mind me double-checking? The guy served in my old unit.”

  “You wanna waste your time? Have at it. My dance card’s full up right now.”

  “I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”

  “Do that. Just do me a favor, Logan, OK?”

  “Anything for you, Detective.”

  “Try to stay out of trouble? Please? My day’s already exhausting enough as it is.”

  He said he’d let me know if anything broke in the case. I said I’d try not to hold my breath given the glacial pace at which he and the LAPD seemed to undertake murder investigations.

  “You’re a barrel of laughs, Logan. By the way, there’s a rumor going around you won’t be flying the friendly skies for awhile.”

  “You heard about that one, huh?”

  “Violating the Vice President’s airspace and freaking out his security detail? Everybody’s heard about that one. It’s all over the news. Good thing I didn’t vote for the guy. I might be pissed at you, too. Nothing personal, Logan, but you do tend to piss off your fair share of people. I mean, when that detective from Rancho Bonita called me and asked who I thought might’ve bombed your apartment, I didn’t even know where to start.”

  “Start at the beginning. My deprived childhood. Being raised by wolves in the forest. Being voted, ‘Most Likely to Have Zero Friends on Facebook When Facebook Is Invented Someday.’ A tragic tale, Detective, the story of my life. It makes Phantom of the Opera look like Beach Blanket Bingo. Who among us, under such circumstances, would not piss off their fair share of people?”

  “You’re fucking nuts,” Czarnek
said.

  “When you’ve got it,” I said, “flaunt it.”

  There was a telephone listing without an address for an “R. and E. Emerson” in Glendale, Arizona. I called. The woman who answered started to say hello but fumbled the phone, which clattered to the floor with a jarring clang. She picked it up and tried again.

  “ ’Lo?”

  “Emma Emerson?”

  “Who’s this?” Her words were slurred, like someone who’d been abruptly awakened from sleep after getting hammered the night before. It wasn’t yet seven in the morning Arizona time.

  I apologized for waking her up. I told her I’d served with her husband, and that I’d only recently heard about his death. I was calling, I said, to express my condolences.

  “ ’Scuse me one second,” she said. More clanging and clattering as she dropped the phone again. Her footsteps grew distant. I could hear coughing, a deep, tubercular hack. Then a labored groan. Then a toilet flushing. A few seconds later, she was back.

  “Phone’s not cordless,” she said. “That way, they can’t listen in.”

  “Who’s they, Mrs. Emerson?”

  “I can’t talk about it over the phone.”

  “But you just said they can’t listen in.”

  “I know what I said!” She popped open a can of something and took a long gulp. “My Robbie was with Alpha. Were you with Alpha?”

  I balked. Any decent operator knows what to do when people start sniffing around for confirmation of his work on the dark side. He lies. He falls back on plausible, well-rehearsed cover stories—the ordinary desk job, the unremarkable home life. He bobs and weaves, redirecting the conversation: Alpha? Never heard of it. Man, that was some kind of gully washer we had last night, wasn’t it? This pasta salad is delicious. What did you put in it? You look great. Have you lost weight? But how do you obfuscate when the person asking the questions was clearly privy, by whatever degree, to the same shadow world in which you once operated? The answer is, you don’t.