Voodoo Ridge

by David Freed

  Savannah wept.

  “This,” she said, “is the happiest day of my life.”

  The technician clasped her hands to her mouth and cried happy tears. Dr. Sharma wiped his eyes. I may well have choked up, too, but I was still too much in shock at my life having changed so quickly and radically.

  You’re going to be somebody’s father, Logan. What in the world has the world come to?

  We’d been divorced for more than six years, Savannah and I. The murder of my former fellow covert operator, Arlo Echevarria, the man she’d dumped me for, had prompted our reconciliation of sorts. She’d approached me several months earlier and I’d grudgingly agreed to her request to help the Los Angeles Police Department hunt down Echevarria’s killer. I knew long after our divorce that I could never stop loving her, but there still remained a part of me that loathed her for having left me to begin with. Which was why, when she told me that she was pregnant with my child, I couldn’t decide whether to run to her or as far away as I could. Sitting there in that doctor’s office, I still wasn’t sure. But looking down at Savannah’s ravishing, tear-streaked face as she gazed in awe at the monitor and the image of our seven-week-old baby, I knew one thing: she was right; I’d never seen her so happy.

  Dr. Sharma printed out a photo of the fetus and handed it to her.

  “Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Logan,” he said.

  Savannah Carlisle Echevarria grasped my hand and smiled through her tears. She hadn’t been Mrs. Logan for a long time. She didn’t try to correct him, though. Neither of us did.

  Through the window of the examining room, across the rooftops of West LA, I gazed toward the gleaming bank towers of Century City. It was one of those perfect autumn mornings in Southern California when the smog drifts off toward Riverside, giving way to clean azure skies and a vaguely defined exuberance that no dream is impossible.

  I told myself that fatherhood’s a good thing. Perhaps the best of things. Whether I’d be good at it, that was another thing.

  WE CELEBRATED pending parenthood over coffee and pie at Du-par’s diner in Los Angeles’s venerable, midcity Farmers Market, a bustling warren of hole-in-the-wall eateries at Third and Fairfax offering everything from Cajun to Korean.

  “Have I ever told you my algebraic theory about why pie is really health food?”

  “ ‘Pie is made from fruit. Fruit is good for you. Ergo, pie is good for you.’ Only about a hundred times, Logan. We used to be married, remember?”

  “We were married? That was you? Really?”

  My former wife smiled and licked the last of the lemon meringue from her fork. The restaurant was jammed. Every table and booth filled. We sat at the counter on red leather swivel chairs as waitresses in Depression-era uniforms ferried cheeseburgers and patty melts to hungry customers.

  “I never asked you,” I said.

  “Asked me what?”

  “How this happened.”

  Savannah looked over at me. “How what happened?”

  “You. Me. The three of us.”

  “How I got pregnant, you mean?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m happy to go through the basics, Logan,” she said coyly, “though I have to say, you already seem to have the process down pretty good.”

  “I just didn’t think that it was possible, a woman your age—not that you’re old or anything.”

  She hoisted a disapproving eyebrow.

  “Thanks for the compliment.”

  “C’mon, Savannah. You know what I meant.”

  She smiled.

  “Relax, Logan. I’m just yanking your chain.” She reached over and speared a forkful of my cherry pie like a trout going after a fly. “To answer your question, I didn’t think I could, either. I wasn’t using anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I probably should’ve asked beforehand.”

  “A little late for that now,” Savannah said.

  I nodded.

  She ate another piece of my pie. “So, tell me: where do you see yourself fitting in with all of this?”

  “Fitting in?”

  “Being a parent.”

  It was time for The Talk: what logistical role did I foresee playing in the care and rearing of the new life we would soon be introducing to the world. Savannah was a former fashion model who barely earned enough income in her new occupation as an unlicensed life coach to cover the groceries. We both knew, however, that she possessed more than adequate resources to comfortably support a child on her own, thanks to her father, a ridiculously wealthy West Texas oilman.

  On the other hand, I had virtually no assets except for the Ruptured Duck, my ratty old Cessna 172 that recently had been rebuilt by my aircraft mechanic friend, Larry Kropf, after I’d run into a little trouble down in San Diego. I operated a flight school headquartered in an oversized storage closet that I sublet from Larry out of his World War II-era hangar at the Rancho Bonita Airport, but my students, unfortunately, were few—as in none. In other words, I was in no financial shape to support a baby, let alone myself.

  “We both know you’re in no financial shape to support a new baby,” Savannah said.

  On top of gorgeous, my ex-wife apparently also was clairvoyant.

  The waitress refilled my cup. I waited until she moved off.

  “There’s more to being a father than paying the bills, Savannah,” I said.

  Not that I had a clue what I was talking about. I never knew my real father or mother. My childhood was spent as a ward of the state of Colorado, shunted from one foster home to the next. Whatever parental role models I had were no role models at all. They were hardscrabble cattle ranchers and dry-wheat farmers, mostly, who’d welcomed me into their modest homes not because of some abiding Christian kindness, but because I represented help for daily chores, and because the county was paying them to board me. None of my foster fathers ever took me to a ball game, helped me with my homework, or counseled me about the birds and the bees. I was extra income and an extra set of hands. Little more. Still, I believed I had the intuitive makings of a passably respectable dad.

  “I can teach him how to catch a football,” I said. “That’s a start.”

  “What if it’s a girl?”

  “Are you implying girls can’t catch footballs? That’s a rather sexist thing to say, Savannah, don’t you think?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Logan, all I’m saying is, I don’t want you to feel obligated in any way, like it’s going to be a burden on you. You can be involved however much you want, or not at all. It’s your call.”

  “What if I want to be fully involved?”

  “I’d welcome that.” She reached over and ate the last of my pie. “But I think I have a right to know how, specifically, you propose to be all in—other than teaching our child how to catch footballs—when you live in Rancho Bonita?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Logan, you live 120 miles from Los Angeles. It seems to me that your location alone would preclude day-to-day parental involvement.”

  “You could always move to Rancho Bonita.”

  “I like living in LA.”

  Part of being human is making pronouncements without weighing their full consequence. Words pass through your lips unfiltered and, suddenly, they’re out there, irretrievable, like some unguided missile. I don’t know whatever possessed me, sitting there in that loud, crowded diner, at a lunch counter that was anything but romantic, to say what I said. Maybe it was the on-screen image I’d seen of that tiny beating heart. My child’s heart. All I know is that the words just came.

  “What if we got remarried?”

  Savannah paused, sipping her coffee, and turned her head, meeting my gaze.

  “What did you just say?”

  “We could fly to Lake Tahoe tomorrow,” I said, “and get a license. No waiting on the Nevada side.”

  She searched my eyes.

  “Please don’t say that if you don’t mean it, Logan.”

  �
�I meant it. Every word.”

  Her own eyes were the color of some exotic strain of golden-hewed wood. It felt like they could see straight through me.

  “You do mean it, don’t you?”

  I nodded solemnly.

  Her arms were suddenly around me. Her lips found mine. I could taste the salt of her tears. We held each other, oblivious to the smiles of other diners.

  “OK, then,” she said.

  “OK, then.”

  She wiped away her tears and said she was going outside to call her father, to tell him the news—but not before kissing me once more.

  I felt good inside. As good as I could ever remember. Watching her head for the door, I was reminded of something I was taught at the academy, how the biggest mistake you can make in war is being too afraid to make a mistake. The same, I suppose, can be said for life in general. I didn’t think I’d screwed up asking Savannah to remarry me.

  Fate would prove me as wrong as I’d ever been.

  TWO

  You haven’t lived until you’ve walked in on your octogenarian landlady, a retired gym teacher from Brooklyn, as she grunts out squat thrusts while trying to keep up with some hunky Israeli physical fitness guru on her ancient, black and white console TV.

  “Working the glutes,” Mrs. Schmulowitz panted, up and down, up and down. “Melting chicken fat like it’s going out of style.”

  Her joints sounded like somebody stepping on broken glass.

  “Careful you don’t hurt yourself, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

  “Don’t you worry about me, bubby. I taught physical education for sixty-one years. And the first rule of physical education is, if your legs don’t feel like they’re falling off your body, you’re being a lazy schlep.”

  With her lime green high-tops, raspberry leggings, tangerine leotard, and a blue New York Giants sweatband, she looked like an eighty-eight-pound Jell-O parfait; one topped with a thinning frizz of hair dyed the color of straw. She sprang off the floor like a woman a third her age, toweled the sweat from her brow, and patted my cheek.

  “So, how was Los Angeles?” Then she caught sight of Savannah, walking in behind me. “And look who you brought back with you! Only the most beauteous gal in the whole world.”

  “You’re looking as lovely as ever, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” Savannah said.

  The two embraced before Mrs. Schmulowitz took a step back and gave her the once-over. Savannah was wearing flat-soled Roman sandals, leather straps snaking up her supple calves, and a pleated peasant skirt. Her perfumed, hennaed tresses cascaded over the shoulders of a simple sleeveless white cotton blouse.

  “I’m gonna tell ya something,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “If I looked that crazy sexy when I was your age, I would’ve blown off the whole teaching gig and gone straight into porno. My only problem was, they hadn’t invented movies yet. People back in my day sat around the campfire, telling stories.”

  “Right,” I said. “The campfire. In Brooklyn.”

  “You’re not that old, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” Savannah smiled.

  “Not that old? What, are you kiddin’ me? You know that key Ben Franklin stuck on the end of his kite? It was to my apartment on Bay Parkway.”

  I tried not to laugh. It would’ve only encouraged her.

  “Savannah and I are flying up to Lake Tahoe tomorrow,” I said. “We’re getting remarried.”

  She was momentarily speechless and obviously delighted. It was the first time I’d ever seen Mrs. Schmulowitz at a loss for words.

  “Mazel tov! May the both of you find as much joy as I did with my third husband. OK, granted, so the man could get a little kinky at times. You take the good with the bad, am I right?” Mrs. Schmulowitz pecked us both on the cheek, then gave me an affectionate, coach-like slap on the butt. “Way to go, bubby. Smart move. She’s a keeper.”

  I politely declined her offer to cook us a celebratory dinner. My plan was to take Savannah out that night, somewhere romantic.

  “Then at least let me watch your cat for you while you’re away,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, “unless, of course, you want him in the wedding. I can see it now, that meshuggener kitty coming down the aisle, the ring tied around his neck. A kitty ring bearer. You could get on the Internet. You could get on Letterman!”

  As if on cue, my cat, Kiddiot—so named because no feline in history was ever more intellectually challenged—came strolling in from Mrs. Schmulowitz’s kitchen looking like an orange balloon mounted on short, skinny legs, with a pipe-cleaner tail that stuck straight up. He made little chirping sounds, like he was happy to see us. He even allowed Savannah to scratch his ears for a few seconds before glancing over at me with a look that I interpreted as disgust, flicked his tail, and strolled nonchalantly back into the kitchen.

  “He’s decided he enjoys chopped liver,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “The secret Schmulowitz family recipe. He prefers it on rye bread.”

  “Toasted?”

  “Of course, toasted. How else is anyone supposed to eat chopped liver?”

  In the next life, I most definitely want to come back as my cat.

  A RESORT community as affluent as Rancho Bonita isn’t hurting for fine dining. California Street, the main drag, which ambles up from the beach for a tree-canopied mile before doglegging inland, boasts dozens of restaurants where dinner and drinks can run more than a monthly car payment on a new Mercedes. They’re not the kind of eateries that locals like me typically frequent: Mexican greasy spoons that serve up six-dollar smothered chile verde burritos fat as bricks, the kind that camp out in your gut like squatters, leaving you convinced you’ll never eat again.

  Mrs. Schmulowitz suggested that I take Savannah to Bel Cibo, an intimate, white-tablecloth Italian joint overlooking the water. I was certain Bel Cibo translated to, “Big Ambiance, Small Portions,” but that was cool. For once, money was no object, even if I didn’t have any. It’s not every day a man asks the world’s most beautiful woman to marry him again and she says yes.

  The menu was in Italian. Not that I could’ve read it anyway, not in the dim candlelight of our corner table. I was getting to that stage in life where I needed reading glasses. I hated it. Our tuxedoed waiter, an anxious little man with a dented nose and dark, slicked back hair, sounded like a guy from New Jersey trying to sound like a guy from Naples.

  “For the belladona?”

  Savannah held a candle close as she perused the menu. She’d put her hair up—glamour incarnate in gold hoops, heels, and a short, off-the-shoulder cocktail dress, black. I’d trimmed my jail break of a beard and changed into my only dress shirt and khakis. I would’ve ironed both had I owned an iron.

  “I’d like to start with the Mozzarella di Bufala con Pomodoro e Basilico, please,” she told the waiter, “then the Tagliolini del Campo as an entree.”

  “Eccellente. And for the signore?”

  “What do you recommend?”

  He recommended the Tortino di Granceaola as an appetizer, followed by Rustichella d’Abruzzo all’Amatriciana. Whatever the hell those were. Both, he assured me, were “molto delizioso.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  The waiter asked if we’d had a chance to look over the wine list.

  “We won’t be having wine tonight,” I said.

  “That’s right, we won’t.” Savannah beamed. “I’m pregnant.”

  “Congratulazioni.”

  He suggested a bottle of sparkling water. Savannah said that would be fine.

  “You have no idea what you just ordered, do you?” she said playfully after the waiter departed.

  “Not a clue. Doesn’t matter, though. All I want is you.”

  She tilted her head, stroking the side of her neck, and smiled demurely. The candlelight danced in her eyes.

  “The romantic Cordell Logan. It’s so unlike you.”

  I was on a roll. “You’re unbelievably beautiful tonight, Savannah. More so than usual. As if that’s even possible. I’m so lucky.”

  “I’m the one w
ho’s lucky.”

  We held hands across the table. I felt warm and good inside, that sensation when you’re living in the moment, where you belong.

  Across the restaurant, a busboy spilled a tray of water glasses that shattered on the travertine floor, loud as firecrackers. Every other diner flinched, startled, including Savannah. I didn’t. She noticed.

  “What is it with you?”

  I looked over at her.

  “Somebody drops a bunch of glasses and everybody jumps out of their skin but you. Arlo was the same way. Why can’t you just be honest with me, Logan?”

  “About what?”

  “You know what. About you. What you did for a living when we were married. The real story.”

  She knew only part of the story, the one before we’d met. That I’d graduated a rare liberal arts major from the Air Force Academy, and that I’d flown combat missions over Iraq in A-10 Warthogs before an old football injury disqualified me from flight status. What she didn’t know was that I’d spent nearly a decade after that off the books, much of it while we were husband and wife, kicking in doors as part of a tier one, inter-service counterterrorism unit, code-named Alpha. I could’ve told her that a man doesn’t spend as long as I did shooting people and getting shot at without learning to control his acoustic startle reflex. I also could’ve told her that Arlo Echevarria had been my boss at Alpha, and that my cover story—working with him at a marketing agency in San Francisco where we all lived at the time—was straight-up hokum. But I kept my mouth shut.

  Savannah suspected that the marketing job was a cover story, especially after Echevarria, who’d retired by then, was shot to death in Los Angeles. Now here we were, less than a year after his murder, planning a new life together amid her same old demands of candor and transparency, and my same old obfuscation of the truth. The more things change . . .