by David Freed
“We’ll talk later.”
“What’s wrong with now?”
“I love you, too, Buzz.” I got off the phone as Savannah sat back down.
“I didn’t know you loved anybody,” she said.
“You’d be surprised.”
“What’re you, some kind of fuckin’ narc or something?” the bartender said accusingly, having overheard my phone conversation with Buzz.
“Me? I’m just a simple country doctor.”
Savannah sipped her drink and made a rancid face as the taste settled on her tongue.
“Yuck.”
“You want wine? Go to the west side.” He snatched Savannah’s glass and dumped it out into the sink.
“Not to resort to clichés, amigo,” I said, “but that’s no way to treat a lady.”
“This is my bar. I’ll treat her any way I want.”
“C’mon, Logan, let’s go,” Savannah said, sliding off her stool.
“We’re not going anywhere until Lord of the Rings here apologizes to you for his crass behavior.”
“You want an apology?” He reached under the bar and produced an aluminum baseball bat. “I got your apology right here.”
I held my ground and stared him down.
“Please don’t do this, Logan,” Savannah said, tugging on my arm. “Let’s just go.”
“Listen to your bitch, Logan,” the barkeep said.
“My bitch?” Something inside me snapped. “Now I’m afraid you’re going to have to apologize twice.”
“Bullshit.”
He jabbed the bat at my face. I twisted it out of his grip and rammed the knobbed handle into his belly. He collapsed to his knees behind the bar, gasping for breath.
“Apologize to the lady.”
“Sorry,” he groaned.
“Again. This time with feeling.”
“I’m really sorry for calling you a bitch.”
I tossed the bat on the floor and followed Savannah out to her car.
“About damn time somebody put that turd in his place,” one of the regulars said.
“Hell, I don’t even know why I even drink here,” said another.
The others all murmured in agreement.
We drove up Mount Washington toward Richard Smith’s house. Not much of a mount. More like a hill. Savannah acted like she was irked that I had resorted to violence defending her honor. And, while she wouldn’t admit it, maybe a little flattered.
“I never realized Buddhists go around pounding people.”
“Only when they deserve it.”
She shook her head like she was disappointed in my behavior and downshifted.
“Well, anyway, I guess I should thank you.”
“Just don’t expect me to hold your umbrella or throw my coat down over any mud puddles. A man does have his limits, you know.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Sea View Lane was twisty and narrow, an eclectic hodgepodge of old and new homes, most with canyon views. Smith’s house was a flat-roofed affair with stucco walls and metal-frame windows, cantilevered precariously over the lip of the canyon on wooden stilts that looked as if they might collapse with the mildest temblor. A black Lexus sedan with Nevada plates was parked out front, behind a VW Beetle with California tags and a bumper sticker that read, “Don’t Forget to Floss.” The white Honda coupe was nowhere to be seen. I tried not to look too obvious as we drove past.
There are thousands of Richard Smiths in America. And, as Czarnek had so astutely pointed out, the country is filled with white Hondas. So, yes, it was very possible that the Richard Smith who’d reported his credit card stolen, and whose Honda was purportedly observed by a crazy ex-cop leaving the scene of one murder, had nothing to do with another. But, I mean, c’mon. What are the odds?
Buddhists believe that events rarely happen by chance, that karma truly does govern the universe. As a budding Buddhist, I suppose I was about to find out. I directed Savannah to park down the street, around the corner and out of sight, which she did. I told her to stay put and got out of the car. She ignored my instructions and got out, too.
“You’re not in charge of me, Logan.”
“I’m not ordering you, Savannah. I’m asking. For your own good. Stay here.”
“If this man was involved in Arlo’s murder, I have a right to confront him.”
“You have a right to get hurt, too. I don’t want that to happen.” And then I said, impulsively, “I care too much about you.”
The expression on her face was something between disbelief and rapture. At least I think it was. Hell, I never could read the woman anyway.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“You said you cared about me. Isn’t that what you just said?”
“Yes, OK. I said I cared about you, Savannah. Can I go now?”
She smiled. “I care about you, too, Logan.”
“If he has anything relevant to say, I’ll come and get you.”
“Just call me. We do live in the Digital Age, you know. Most of us, anyway. Some of us still live in the Pleistocene Era.”
“Was that an insult?”
“Scientific observation.”
I grinned and started walking.
Richard Smith’s doorbell chimed like Big Ben. No one responded. I pushed the button again and pounded my fist on the door because nothing says “You have a visitor” like pounding and impatiently ringing at the same time. I tried the doorknob. Locked. No one appeared to be home.
There was an attached two-car garage. I stood on tiptoes and peeked in through a narrow transom window at the top of the door. No vehicles inside. No newspapers piled up on the short driveway. Two large terracotta clay pots planted with pink geraniums flanked the front door. I checked the soil in the pots. Damp. I looked in the mailbox out front. Empty. The postal carrier would’ve already come and gone, this late in the day. Somebody had to have picked up the mail.
I called directory assistance. The operator said she could find no listing for a Richard Smith on Sea View Lane. I took out a business card from my wallet, jotted “I need to speak with you,” and slipped the card under the front door.
My work was done.
I was on my way back to Savannah’s Jaguar when a two-door white Honda Accord with black-tinted windows and a spoiler on the back cruised past me. Smith’s garage door opened electronically. The Honda pulled into the driveway and rolled into the garage. A squat, middle-aged man in a brown UPS uniform got out of the car and retrieved two paper bags bulging with groceries from the trunk.
“Mr. Smith?”
He turned toward me, startled.
“Can I help you?”
“My name’s Logan. I’m looking into a murder that occurred up in the Valley a few weeks ago. A witness said he saw your car leaving the scene. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“A murder? There must be a mistake.”
“That’s possible, though the witness was pretty adamant he’d seen your car. This is your car, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s my car. But I just can’t understand who would ever possibly say something like that. I mean—” he laughed nervously— “I’m no murderer.”
“The witness is a former police officer.”
“Really?” Smith was beginning to breathe hard. His upper lip glistened with sweat. “You a cop, too?”
I knew he’d be more willing to talk if he assumed that I was.
“What do you think?”
“Well, I really don’t know what more I can tell you. I don’t know anything about any of this, OK? So, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go in now. I’m not feeling too good. Must’ve been something I had for lunch.”
“Do you ever loan your car to anyone, Mr. Smith?”
“Loan my car? Umm, lemme think.”
He set his grocery bags down on a woodworking bench inside the garage and licked his lips, running the back of his left hand across his mouth. Hand tools hung
from a pegboard behind the bench, with various power tools stored on shelves below.
Among the tools was a Sawzall.
“It’s possible I may have let my daughter’s boyfriend borrow it when his car was in the shop, something like that but, you know, no big deal. That’s his car, right there.” Smith pointed to the black Lexus parked in front of the house. His hand was trembling. “He lives outta town, visits quite a bit.”
“Mr. Smith, did you report your American Express card stolen recently?”
“What’s that got to do with anything? Why are you asking me all these questions? I told you, there’s been a mistake. I don’t know anything about any shooting.”
“I said someone was murdered, Mr. Smith. I didn’t say anything about anybody getting shot.”
“Oh my God.” He slumped to the concrete floor, clutching his chest.
“Are you OK?”
“He told me it wouldn’t come to this,” Smith cried. “The Russian, he made him do it. Either he did what the Russian wanted, or they were gonna turn him in.”
“Turn who in?”
“My daughter, her boyfriend. He said if we told anybody, they’d kill us, too. Jesus. I think I need an ambulance. Oh my God.”
“Just breathe, Mr. Smith, try to relax. I’m calling 911 right now.”
I was punching in the number when the door connecting the garage to the house opened, revealing a young woman in pink dental scrubs and the shadow of a tall, angular young man standing behind her. I heard her scream, “Don’t!” as the man shoved her aside. All I saw was the nickel-plated semi-automatic he was raising up to fire at me. His right arm was straight, his hand flat, palm down, the pistol horizontal to the floor, the way gangsta rappers like to shoot.
Had it been Hollywood, I would’ve rolled to throw off his aim, bullets whizzing in slow-mo’ inches from my face. But this was no movie. I held steady and reached for the little revolver tucked in the small of my back. Instinct shooting is about smoothness, not speed. I could hear Laz Kizlyak, my old firearms trainer from Alpha, talking like he was standing there beside me. Grasp butt of weapon firmly, hand high on grip panels, and draw, not jerk, in single fluid motion. Trigger finger extends parallel to barrel, falling alongside frame above trigger as weapon is withdrawn.
Something hot smacked me in the shoulder. I ignored it, elevating the muzzle of my gun as I extended my shooting hand, swinging my other hand up and locking both hands together just as the revolver entered my peripheral vision. Wrap support hand around middle, ring and small fingers of gun hand, overlapping thumbs on backstrap of weapon. Do not clutch weapon. Clutching makes weapon shake. Face target squarely as weapon rises. Spread legs shoulder-width, assuming solid and braced firing platform. Bend slightly forward from torso and flex knees. Thrust hands out from the midline of your chest. Lock wrists, lock elbows, lock shoulders. Level muzzle just below eye level sliding index finger on shooting hand from frame of weapon onto trigger.
Even without a stopwatch, I knew that no more than a second had elapsed from the moment I first glimpsed the gun in the man’s hand to the moment I double-tapped my trigger.
Only after he was down and I had kicked his pistol away from his body did I realize that the man I’d killed was Lamont Royale.
TWENTY-FIVE
Everyone complains about hospital accommodations, like hospitals are supposed to be the Four Seasons or something. My stay at Cedars-Sinai couldn’t have been more luxurious. Dinner the first night was a Caesar salad with pan-seared ahi, whole grain muffins, and chocolate pudding with real whipped cream. I had a private room with a thirty-two-inch flat-screen TV and a view of the Hollywood Hills, a fine bed that adjusted about a hundred different ways, and sponge baths administered by certified nursing assistants who, if I closed my eyes and imagined hard enough, resembled the kind of scantily clad Nubian princesses one would expect to perform such services. I would’ve stayed a month had they let me—especially considering Gil Carlisle was footing the bill.
“Almost makes getting shot worthwhile,” I said to my menopausal battle-axe of a nurse as she changed the dressing on my wound.
“Almost,” she said, ripping a strip of surgical tape off my skin.
The bullet had shattered my left collarbone and lodged in my shoulder. A fraction of an inch lower, the surgeon had told me almost breathlessly, and it would’ve severed my subclavian artery. I probably would have bled out in the ambulance. As it was, I could expect a full recovery after a few weeks’ rest. The same could not be said for Lamont Royale. Two .357 slugs to the forehead have a tendency to do that to a man.
“By the way,” Czarnek said, standing at the foot of my bed and watching the nurse work, “Royale wasn’t his real name. His real name was London Bridges.”
“Sure it was,” I said. “And I’m the Empire State Building.”
“I’m serious. London Bridges. I mean, who names their kid London Bridges?”
“My husband has a first cousin named April Showers,” Nurse Battle-Axe said.
“I knew a guy in high school named Burt Nurney,” I said.
Nobody laughed. Tough crowd. Czarnek cleared his throat and waited while the nurse finished patching me up.
“I know when I’m not wanted,” she said. “Press the button if you need anything. I probably won’t answer.”
“Big surprise there,” I said.
She gave me a wink and left.
As Czarnek explained it, London Bridges, aka Lamont Royale, was a young man with a past. He’d grown up in Miami, the youngest son of an African-American real estate developer and his Swedish-born wife, and dropped out of the University of Miami his sophomore year to attend culinary school, hitting the links during his off-hours to become a scratch golfer. But apparently he found criminal enterprises more entertaining. With multiple prison stints on priors ranging from burglary to assault, he eventually skipped out on parole and traded the Sunshine State for Las Vegas, there to reinvent himself, as so many others do. London Bridges became Lamont Royale, golf pro. While giving a private lesson one day, he taught my former father-in-law how to nail a fifty-yard bunker shot, then shared his secret recipe for beef bourguignon (applewood smoked bacon, heavy on the Côtes du Rhône). Within a week, Royale had quit his country club gig and moved into the penthouse to work for Carlisle full-time.
Somewhere along the way, Royale had also been recruited by Russian intelligence operative and oil broker Pavel Tarasov.
“Tarasov found out about his criminal record. He knew Royale was on the lam, so he blackmailed him,” Czarnek said. “Anytime Tarasov wanted him to pull some little caper for him, all he had to do was threaten to rat him out and Royale danced like a puppet.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Your new best friend, Richard Smith. Can’t shut the guy up. A regular Chatty Cathy. He’s down on the coronary ward. He feels damn lucky he and his daughter survived the whole thing.”
It was Royale, Czarnek said, who’d introduced Tarasov to my former father-in-law, Gil Carlisle. There was a fortune to be made in the Kashagan oil field. All Tarasov needed was a willing investor with deep pockets. As soon as Carlisle’s check cleared the bank, Tarasov intended to have him die “accidentally,” after which he would take over the entire operation.
“Tarasov gets wind that Echevarria’s doing some investigative work for Carlisle. He worries that Echevarria’ll find out shit that’ll squirrel the deal in Kazakhstan, so he decides to have Echevarria whacked. He sends Royale to Arizona with orders to convince a guy he knows out there who’s on the Russian payroll to do the killing.”
“Robbie Emerson.”
Czarnek nodded. “Royale threatens to turn Emerson in to the FBI unless he agrees to be the triggerman, but Emerson can’t bring himself to take the assignment. Commits suicide instead. So Tarasov orders Royale to do the killing.”
“What about Ortiz, the retired math teacher?”
“I have to say, you pegged that one right, Logan. Royale told Smi
th he messed up on the address. Got the two streets confused. Went to the right house number but the wrong house. He shoots Ortiz thinking it’s Echevarria, realizes later that he’s screwed the pooch, goes to the right address a few days later, and this time does the job right.”
“You told me the two murders weren’t linked. Two guns, different calibers.”
“I stand corrected. We found both guns in Smith’s garage, where Royale had stashed ’em: The .45 he used on Ortiz and the Glock .40-caliber he shot Echevarria with—which, by the way, he also shot you with. We also found the Domino’s shirt he was wearing the night he killed Echevarria. He hid that in the garage, too, including his receipt from the thrift store where he bought it. Not the sharpest tool in the shed.”
The LAPD, he noted, had gone back to Echevarria’s neighbors and run a photo lineup past them. Everyone picked Royale out of the six-pack.
“We showed the same six-pack to witnesses in the Ortiz homicide,” Czarnek said. “They picked out Royale as well. The thing I couldn’t figure out, though, was how Echevarria’s neighbors could all say the shooter was dark-complected, when witnesses in the Ortiz homicide all said he was white.”
“Helps if your killer’s biracial,” I said.
“Two for the price of one,” Czarnek said.
Royale denied any involvement in the murder of Gennady Bondarenko, according to Czarnek, even though the bullet recovered from Bondareko’s crispy critter remains matched the gun Royale had used on Echevarria and me. The story he told Smith before he died was that Tarasov had attempted to get Bondarenko to invest in the oil deal, and that he intended to have Gil Carlisle “permanently removed” as soon as the deal was finalized, thereby upping both Tarasov’s and Bondarenko’s potential shares. Bondarenko declined the offer.
“He told Tarasov he was done with that life,” Czarnek said, “so Tarasov threatened to blackmail him. Bondarenko said if he tried anything like that, he’d drop a dime on Tarasov’s plan to kill Carlisle. So Tarasov shot him. He cuts off Bondarenko’s hands with the power saw he has Royale buy for him out in Arizona, steals a Winnebago, sets it on fire with Bondarenko’s body inside, and tells Royale to stash the murder weapon. Royale hides it in Smith’s garage.”
