Flat Spin

by David Freed

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I was with Alpha.”

  Emma Emerson gulped down more of whatever it was she was drinking. “Cops said it was suicide, but I know it wasn’t. They just said that cuz they’re all scared to death.”

  “Of what?”

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

  She asked me where I was calling from. I told her California.

  “My Robbie and me, we honeymooned in San Diego after he got back from Desert Storm. The first war. Ate lobster. I was pregnant.” She started crying.

  I rattled off something about how the death of a loved one is never easy, and asked if I could come talk to her about what had happened to her husband. I could drive out that afternoon, I said, if that worked for her.

  “I don’t know you,” Emma Emerson said, sniffing back tears.

  “No, ma’am, you don’t, but I knew your husband. And I know that if there were unanswered questions regarding my death, and he was talking to my wife, he’d want to get to the bottom of it, too.”

  She wouldn’t give me her home address because she didn’t know whom to trust and whom not to, she said. We agreed to meet instead in the parking lot of a mini-mart on North Dysart Road, just off Interstate-10, in west Phoenix. If I checked out OK, she said, we’d drive to her house where she would show me “all the evidence” confirming her claim that her husband could not have killed himself. She’d be driving his truck, she said. His blood was still all over the inside of it when the police finally released it to her from the impound lot. She’d spent an entire day cleaning it up with rags and a half-gallon of bleach. It was, she said, the hardest thing she’d had to do in her life.

  “And don’t think about trying nothing funny, cuz I got a gun and I know how to use it,” Emma Emerson said. “It’s an Army gun. My Robbie kept it when he left the service. Just don’t tell nobody.”

  “Mum’s the word.”

  I showered, shaved, and brushed my teeth, courtesy of my exwife. After I combed my hair, I put on the clothes I’d bought the night before. The boxer shorts were too big in the waist and the pants too long, but they’d have to do. I was stuffing my dirty laundry in the Kmart bag when there was a soft knock at the door.

  Savannah was in her blue robe. Her hair was mussed. She looked like she’d been up all night.

  “You want some breakfast?”

  She seemed surprised I’d say yes.

  I leaned against the refrigerator, sipping coffee from a ceramic mug, watching my ex-wife scramble eggs. I was pondering the concept of forgiveness. In Buddhism, to forgive is to prevent harmful thoughts from wreaking havoc on your mental well-being. I realized I was way beyond that. The havoc that had been wrought still ran deep. I wanted to forgive. I wanted to tell her that I’d messed up big-time, and that in retrospect, she’d had every right under the circumstances to do what she did with Echevarria. But the resentments that consumed me in the wake of our divorce remained in place six years later. They’d eased over time perhaps, but they were still there. A palpable presence, a sour taste in my mouth.

  “Bacon?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “That’s right. You don’t eat bacon.”

  “Only when the Buddha’s not looking.”

  “Tomatoes?”

  “Sure.”

  Savannah diced a tomato on a cutting board and ground sea salt into a bowl containing half-a-dozen raw eggs. She added some cream, forked the eggs to a froth, then poured the concoction into a stainless-steel skillet simmering on her center island cooktop.

  “Sometimes,” she said, slowly swishing the eggs back and forth, “I wish I’d never met Arlo.”

  “Kind of makes two of us.”

  The sun was beginning to peek over the ridgeline, fingers of light probing the lush green arroyos and the hills below. We sat in the corner nook of Savannah’s kitchen, close but not too close, and ate breakfast—I did, anyway. Savannah’s hands were clasped to her mouth as if in supplication, her down-turned eyes fixed on my plate. I noticed she was still wearing her wedding band.

  “Good chow,” I said.

  “Glad you like it.”

  Couples reunite after tumultuous breakups. They’ve even been known occasionally to live happily ever after. What if Savannah and I did? The thought rumbled around inside my head as I ate. I was tempted to throw it out there for discussion. But what if she said no? I’d come off looking weak. Or, worse, what if she said yes, let’s give it another go, one more shot? I’d be left wondering how long before she sautéed my heart once more and walked out on me again.

  “The best thing I ever did,” Savannah said, “was marrying you. And the worst.”

  “Boy howdy, do I know that feeling.”

  She searched my eyes. I’d like to think she was looking for a hint of reprieve, some small clue to affirm her unspoken desire to strip me naked and have mind-altering, three-alarm breakfast-nook sex with me, but her face was a cipher. Hell, I never could figure out the woman, anyhow.

  I finished the last of my eggs. “I need to borrow your car again.”

  “Why? Where’re you going?”

  “Phoenix.”

  “You have an airplane.”

  An airplane, yes, but no license to legally fly it.

  “Plane’s in the shop,” I said, lying. “I need to get to Phoenix this afternoon.”

  “What’s so important you have to be there this afternoon?”

  “Can I borrow your car, Savannah, yes or no?”

  “Not unless you tell me what’s so important in Phoenix that you have to be there today.”

  I didn’t have time to deliver the whole truth and nothing but.

  “Somebody died,” I said.

  “Somebody connected to Arlo?”

  “Possibly.”

  “They were murdered, too, weren’t they?”

  “More like suicide.”

  “I asked you to stop all this, Logan.”

  “And I told you, I can’t.”

  “Right. Because Arlo saved you from getting hit by a streetcar. And I’m supposed to actually believe that?”

  “Little-known fact: More people are killed every year by streetcars than killer bees.”

  “You’re so totally full of shit, you know that?”

  “Look it up, you don’t believe me.”

  Savannah shook her head. “Someday,” she said, “you’ll tell me the truth. Maybe.”

  Someday. Maybe. But not today.

  I set my plate in the sink.

  “I need a go or no-go on the car, Savannah.”

  Savannah sighed. “The keys are on the desk in the study,” she said. “Just bring it back full.”

  I eased the Jaguar to the end of the driveway and waited while the security gate swung slowly inward. I was thinking that the last thing I wanted to do was spend six hours driving across the desert to Phoenix to grill some woman I’d never met about whether her husband whom I barely knew did or didn’t kill himself. I had the FAA to do battle with, my pilot’s license to restore, a flight school to run into the ground. What did I care how Robbie Emerson died? I suppose the same could’ve been said about Arlo Echevarria. So what if I owed him my life? Had some dipstick in a Domino’s shirt lit me up like a Christmas tree instead of him, there’s no way that self-absorbed son of a bitch would’ve ever gone hunting my killer. Not after I stole his wife. I pondered the notion of giving Gil Carlisle back his money—what was left of it, anyway. But something stopped me. Not some lesson from the Buddha about fidelity to the memory of a friend—even if that friend turned out to be the opposite—and not some cheesy, ready-room pep talk about completing the mission regardless the cost. No, what kept me from putting the Jag in reverse and giving Savannah back her keys was the ill-formed notion that somehow, if I could just piece the puzzle together and deliver her some closure, that she would be there, waiting for me in the end, and that we could resume life together as if Arlo Echevarria never existed. Improbable, I realized, b
ut there it was. Whatever I owed Arlo Echevarria, I decided, would be paid in full by my making the trek to Arizona. My conscience would be assuaged, the ledger balanced.

  Immersed as I was in such thoughts, it took me a second to notice the black van with tinted windows that turned sharply into the driveway and skidded to a loud, screeching stop directly in front of Savannah’s car.

  The driver was already out of the van and advancing toward me, reaching his right hand into a blue Dodger warm-up jacket like he was going for a weapon. He was about thirty and on the thin side, with a long loping stride, shaved head, milk chocolate skin, moon face, ballistic-shooter sunglasses. I drew my revolver, threw open the Jag’s passenger door and, shielding myself behind it, squared his chest in my gun sights.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” He slammed on the brakes like some cartoon character. “Ain’t no need for none of that, brother. C’mon now.”

  “Get your hands up where I can see ’em.”

  “No worries. Take it easy.” He reached for the clouds.

  “Now turn around with your fingers interlocked on the back of your head.”

  “Anything you want, brother. Be cool now. C’mon.”

  I advanced on him in a two-handed combat crouch and ordered him to spread his legs shoulder-width. When I got close enough, I patted him down from behind with one hand, my gun trained on him with the other. He was unarmed.

  “What’s under the jacket?”

  “Legal papers.” He turned his head and eyeballed me, his hands still in the air. “Are you Mr. Cordell Logan?”

  “Only if you’re from Publishers Clearing House.”

  “Publisher’s what?” He realized I was messing with him. “No, man, I’m a—”

  “Process server,” I said, finishing his sentence for him and stuffing my revolver back in my belt. “No balloons. That should’ve been my first clue.”

  I apologized for nearly killing him. He professed no hard feelings.

  “In my line of work, comes with the turf,” he said, handing me a temporary protective order with my name printed on it. “You’ve been duly served.”

  “Duly noted.”

  He backed his van up and sped off down the hill in search of his next litigant.

  The protective order, signed by one Ronald Jablonsky, district court judge from Clark County, Nevada, accused me of harassing my former father-in-law, his assistant, Miles Zambelli, and Savannah. It ordered me to cease and desist in the matter of Arlo Echevarria, warning that I would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if I failed to do so. I wondered how big a bribe Carlisle had slipped the judge. I crumpled the paper, tossed it in the backseat, and headed east, out of the city, the sun in my eyes.

  Savannah called.

  “My housekeeper just told me there was some big commotion down on the street.”

  “Your father served me with a cease and desist. How’d he know I was at your house?”

  “I told him.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Whatever you may think of him, Logan, he’s still my father.”

  She’d called him after she’d gone to bed, she said, because she was confused about her feelings for me and needed to talk it through with someone. Her father, she said, had offered to buy her a first-class ticket and put her up at his flat in Paris for a month, all expenses paid—enough time for her to come to her senses and realize that she had no business ever giving me the time of day again.

  “So what did you tell him?”

  “I told him I’d have to think about it.”

  “Personally, I would’ve gone with the place in Paris.”

  “Of course you would’ve,” Savannah said.

  I promised I’d have her car back the next day, if not sooner.

  TWENTY

  As the objective observer motors across much of rural America, he is often struck by the thought, “How could anyone with half a brain ever live in a hell hole like this?” Certainly, the extreme eastern reaches of Southern California, where the desertscape turns more lunar-like with the passing of each bleak, interminable mile, embody the very definition of such godforsaken places. Places where the reception on one’s car radio becomes limited to Mexican border blaster mega-stations, gospel-thumping fearmongers, and twangy country-western tunes like, “There Ain’t Enough Room in My Fruit of the Looms to Hold All My Lovin’ for You.” Places better flown over than driven through.

  I was listening to Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart,” pondering the profundity of the Man in Black’s lyrics, when Miles Zambelli telephoned. Much as I disliked Zambelli, I was happy to talk to him. Given that I still had another two hours of boring, featureless desert ahead of me, I would’ve been happy to talk to just about anybody.

  He said he was speaking on behalf of Carlisle, who was concerned that my making “unfounded and inflammatory” inquiries in Echevarria’s death threatened to derail the oil deal with Tarasov in Kazakhstan.

  “Neither Mr. Carlisle nor Mr. Tarasov appreciates you continuing to make these ridiculous inquiries,” Zambelli said, “and, quite frankly, neither do I. You will cease and desist, or Mr. Carlisle will have no choice but to demand reimbursement in full of the monies he paid you which, if you’ll recall, required you to do nothing more than very briefly apprise the police as to the nature of Mr. Echevarria’s employment history.”

  “Please inform Mr. Carlisle I am in receipt of the court order issued by Judge Jablowme, and that I have filed it accordingly. Also please inform Mr. Carlisle that any and all monies paid me to date have already been expended on cheap wine and even cheaper women.”

  “If you think this is a joking matter, Mr. Logan, I would advise you to think again. As you continue to cast outrageous aspersions on wholly innocent individuals in the death of Mr. Echevarria, including Mr. Carlisle and myself, you’re also interfering with an ongoing police investigation. And I can assure you, sir, we will not stand for it.”

  “That is some mighty fine speechifying, Miles. Did you learn that at Harvard Law or watching Law and Order?”

  I wasn’t sure if the connection was lost before or after he hung up on me.

  Emma Emerson arrived twenty minutes late for our rendezvous in the mini-mart parking lot on Phoenix’s west side. She was driving her late husband’s red Silverado. Though it was still daylight, I flashed my headlights three times to let her know it was me she was looking for, then got out and walked over.

  She was an anorexic, fifty-something brunette in jeans and a goose-down vest, even though it was eighty degrees outside, and bulging, slightly misaligned green eyes that never quite met mine.

  “Got any ID on you?”

  I dug the driver’s license out of my wallet and held it up for her inspection. Resting on her lap was a nine-millimeter Beretta. A vintage Winchester carbine rode in a gun rack mounted on the inside of the truck’s rear window behind her, along with a .223-caliber Ruger survival rifle with a plastic laminate stock.

  “I don’t remember Robbie ever saying anything about serving with Cordell Logan, no middle name,” she said, peering at my license photo. “Sounds like one of them made-up Hollywood names to me.”

  “The studios made me change it. My real name’s Norma Jean Baker.”

  She eyed me suspiciously without so much as a rumor of a smile. Grabbing a pack of unfiltered Camels from the truck’s center console, she eased one between her lips, fired it up with a match, and said, “I’m gonna ask you two questions. Get either one wrong, we’re done. Got it?”

  “I just hope they’re true or false. I don’t do well on multiple choice.”

  Tendrils of smoke shot out of her nose. “True or false: The standard-issue weapon of Alpha tactical teams was the MP-5 submachine gun.”

  “There was no standard-issue weapon. Every man carried whatever he qualified on, as long as it shot standard NATO ammunition.”

  If she was impressed, she didn’t show it.

  “Second question: Wha
t name did my Robbie use in the field?”

  “Herman Munster.”

  She exhaled, openly relieved, and nodded approvingly. “Can’t be too careful who you’re dealing with these days.” She glanced over at Savannah’s Jaguar. “That your car?”

  “Ex-wife’s car.”

  “She must still love the hell outta you if she let you borrow a vehicle like that. You still love her?”

  “All depends on how horny I am at the moment.”

  Emma Emerson grinned. She was missing an upper incisor.

  “The last honest man on earth,” she said. “Get in.”

  We merged from I-10 onto the Agua Fria Freeway, heading north past half-built subdivisions, tan stucco and faux-Spanish tile structures, most of them abandoned amid the nation’s Great Recession. Emma rocked back in her seat to check her side view mirrors, then leaned forward over the steering wheel, scanning the skies above and ahead of us like she was looking for enemy aircraft.

  “Want a beer?”

  “Wish I could.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She reached behind her seat without taking her eyes off the road and fished a Bud Light out of a red and white Igloo cooler. “Everything’s over at the house,” she said, “all the evidence of who killed my Robbie.”

  She popped open the can.

  “Why do you think he was killed?”

  “Cuz they wanted him killed.”

  “Who’s they, Emma?”

  She glanced over at me “Who do you think? The government.”

  Robbie Emerson had gleaned volumes about Alpha’s tactics, techniques and procedures—much of which he’d appeared to have shared with his wife. Knowledge of even Alpha’s name was classified TS/SCI back when the group was operational. So sensitive were its activities that even the Buddha would’ve required a full background investigation to be briefed. But that hadn’t stopped Emma Emerson from apparently learning all about Alpha from her late husband. She droned on and on about all the many classified missions in which he’d participated, and what an outstanding covert operator he’d been.