by David Freed
“Well, that was awkward,” she said with an embarrassed smile.
I wanted to tell her about Savannah. But that would’ve required me to think about Savannah, which I’d already spent way too much time doing.
Her partner flashed the cruiser’s headlights impatiently.
“You’ll have to come back down for the prelim,” Rosario said.
“We’ll grab lunch.”
“I’d like that.”
Lawless tapped his horn. “Time to go.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Rosario said and began walking.
I didn’t doubt she would.
Bunny Myers was still screaming injustice as the ambulance transporting him drove out of the park.
MIDNIGHT WAS long gone by the time the giant cross atop Mt. Soledad faded from view in the Escalade’s rearview mirror. The odds of finding a decent Mexican restaurant serving at that hour anywhere in the San Diego area were minimal. Rolling down Mission Boulevard through Pacific Beach, I spotted a Taco Bell that was still open for business. It would have to do.
I maneuvered the Escalade into the empty drive-through lane and stopped at the sign where you decide what you want to eat. It didn’t matter what I wanted because there’s really no difference from one menu item to the next at Taco Bell. There’s a big machine in the back that cranks out what looks like gorditas and chalupas, but it’s all really essentially the same stuff.
“Welcome to Taco Bell. May I take your order?” She sounded Hispanic and young.
“I’d like two Burrito Supremes and a small iced tea, please.”
“Would you like some cheesy nachos with that?”
“Only if they come with an all-expense-paid trip to the cardiac care unit.”
“Did you say yes on the nachos?”
“That’s a big negative on the nachos.”
She gave me my total. I pulled forward to the window and handed over a ten-spot. Giving me back my change, she noticed the bullet holes stitched in the SUV’s roof and cocked a tweezed, pencil-thin, nineteen-year-old eyebrow that said, “Like, what the hell are those?”
“If you’re a fan of the Cadillac Escalade, you’ll notice that this happens to be the Tupac Shakur Signature Edition. Bullet holes come standard.”
She smiled nervously, handed me my supper-in-a-sack and quickly slid her window closed.
I ate on the drive back to Hub and Crissy Walker’s house—checking this time, repeatedly, to make sure I wasn’t being tailed. It dawned on me as I polished off the second burrito, mystery meat and sour cream glopping in my lap, that I’d forgotten to check in with Mrs. Schmulowitz to find out how her tummy tuck had gone. Too late to call. I’d ring her up in the morning. Maybe she’d have news about Kiddiot. I hoped they were both OK.
My plan was to catch a few hours’ sleep back at the Walkers’ guesthouse, secure the $5,000 Hub still owed me, and be on my quasi-merry way. I’d make arrangements to have the Ruptured Duck transported by truck, then hop a train back up to Rancho Bonita. All of the money I got from my work in San Diego, I knew, would likely go to paying the difference between the actual costs to repair the Duck and what my insurance was willing to cover. Without an airplane at my disposal, I couldn’t instruct others to fly, and without students, I had no regular income other than my monthly pension check from Uncle Sugar. How I’d keep the lights on once I got home was a question I wasn’t prepared to answer.
The feeling lingered deep in my stomach, along with two Burrito Supremes, that there had to be a connection between the execution of the man convicted of murdering Hub Walker’s daughter, Ruth, and the stabbing death of Ruth’s former romantic rival, Janet Bollinger. I didn’t know what that connection was, but I found it hard to believe that Bunny Myers was the linchpin. Yes, he was unhinged. Yes, he had a hair trigger. Yet I had derived nothing from his body language or words as he held me at gunpoint to suggest anything other than the fact that he was being truthful when he claimed no involvement in Bollinger’s death.
All the same, I remained conflicted by a gnawing sense that Hub Walker did know something he wasn’t saying. Whatever it was, however, I wasn’t particularly keen on finding it out. Walker was a living legend. The world needs its legends. What it doesn’t need is people like me poking holes in them. As far as I was concerned, the sooner I left San Diego, the better. I’d be doing the world a favor. The people of earth could thank me later.
There was still the matter of who’d sabotaged the Duck. Driving back to La Jolla that night, my desire to hunt down and punish the culprit took on phantasmagoric overtones as I fantasized over what I would do to him. Carve out his lungs? Play “Lord of the Dance” on his face wearing golf spikes? I don’t dance and I don’t play golf.
It would have to be lungs.
First, though, I had to find him.
Thirteen
The mockingbird’s repertoire was impressive. I’ll give him that much. He sang all night perched on a telephone wire outside the window of the Walkers’ guesthouse, belting out tunes like the feathered incarnation of Frank Sinatra. Sleep amid his serenade was impossible. I finally gave up as dawn approached, did a few push-ups and crunches, took a shower, changed into clean clothes, and waited for the kitchen lights to come on in the main house.
Many Buddhists striving to become one with the universe meditate in the early morning when their minds are not yet cluttered with the trivial concerns of the day that lies ahead. I sat on the edge of the bed, closed my eyes with my hands loose in my lap, and tried to calm my mind and body, starting with my toes. But all I could think about was that stupid bird, crooning out his talented yet annoying heart. At 6:15, the kitchen door flew open and Hub bolted outside in his robe and slippers, waving his arms and yelling, “Hey!”
The feathered Sinatra flew away.
“If I sang that well, I wouldn’t be giving flying lessons,” I said as I exited the guesthouse, “I’d be working the main room at Caesars Palace.”
Hub rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “You want some coffee?”
“Need is more like it.”
I followed him inside and took a seat at the kitchen table while he loaded the coffeemaker with grounds and water. Neither of us spoke. It was still too early.
“Heard you come in last night,” he said after awhile. “Out on the town, were we?”
“Something like that.”
He got out two cups and a quart of milk from the refrigerator. “Hope you don’t mind skim. Crissy won’t let me have real milk.”
“Skim’s like water with a little white in it. I’ll take it black.”
I told him that the sheriff’s department had arrested two suspects on suspicion of murdering Janet Bollinger.
“I heard,” Walker said.
“How’d you hear?”
“A little bird told me.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder and winked enigmatically. The coffeemaker hissed. Hub leaned his elbows on the counter and watched the ebony liquid stream into the carafe.
“Played golf with Greg Castle yesterday,” he said.
“So I heard.”
“He won’t go public with that paternity test he took. Says it would embarrass his family. He did tell me, though, he gave some thought to what you said, about an independent audit. He agrees it’d help prove his company wasn’t stealing from the government, like Munz said they were.”
“Good deal. Then I’ll just collect the rest of my money and be on my way.”
Hub looked over at me again. “What money?”
“The other five grand I’m still owed.”
“I don’t owe you nothin’,” he said sternly. “I said I’d pay you the other five after you dug up something to give the newshounds, to get ’em off Greg’s back. You didn’t do that.”
Anybody can get bent out of whack when the bills come due. But it was the degree of Walker’s vehemence that seemed out of character. For a man with an otherwise amiable, slow-to-boil disposition, he was being rather loutish.
<
br /> “You didn’t know anything about Greg Castle’s paternity test until I told you about it, Hub. I think that counts for something. He also wasn’t planning on commissioning an audit until I suggested it. That counts for something, too.”
“That test don’t count ’cuz Greg won’t release it to the press. And he told me that audit was something Castle Robotics was probably gonna do anyway. From where I’m standing, that means you haven’t held up your end of the bargain.”
“I flew down here in good faith to work for you. I did the work, my plane now looks like something my cat coughed up, and did I mention I almost got killed? From where I’m standing, or sitting, as the case may be, that’s easily worth five grand.”
“A deal’s a deal,” Walker said coldly, “and you didn’t hold up your end of the deal.”
Crissy swept into the kitchen in black running tights and a gray, UC San Diego hoodie, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Hub asked her if Ryder was still sleeping.
“Like a log.”
She nabbed a bottle of fluorescent green energy drink from the refrigerator and asked me pleasantly how I’d slept, as if what had occurred between the two of us the night before hadn’t.
“That crazy bird kept him up,” Hub said before I could respond, “like it did me.”
Crissy took a long swallow from her bottle. “He just needs a little comfort,” she said, looking at me with a small, telling smile that Hub, waiting on the coffee, didn’t catch. “Like we all do.”
I pretended not to notice, and asked Walker again how he’d heard so quickly that arrests had been made in the Janet Bollinger case.
“I heard,” Crissy said. “I got up early to do yoga and turned on the radio. It was on the news. I’m just so relieved they caught them.”
Hub poured the coffee. “Janet was a nice girl,” he said, “even if she did get involved with Munz. Nobody deserves to die like she did. Her or my daughter.”
He stared out at the pool, pursing his lips. Crissy caressed his arm, said she’d be back from her run in forty-five minutes, and gave him a departing peck on the cheek. I waited until I heard the front door open and latch closed.
“There’s something you’re not telling me, Hub.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Janet Bollinger was stabbed two days ago. Somebody drove onto the flight line at Montgomery Field that night and tinkered with the engine on my airplane. That’s why I crashed.”
“And you think I had something to do with that?”
I said nothing and watched him.
Walker began pacing angrily. “You got no right saying something like that to me in my own house. No right at all.”
“Did you go out that night, Hub?”
“I told you. I couldn’t sleep that night. I took a pill.”
He strode across the kitchen to a gumwood desk built into a small alcove and yanked opened a side drawer. Fearing he might be going for a weapon, I reached across the counter for a steak knife from a butcher block carving set—paranoia wasn’t a mental disorder among Alpha operators, it was a job requirement—when I realized that Walker wasn’t attempting to arm himself. He was reaching for his checkbook and a pen.
He scribbled out a check like he couldn’t do it fast enough, tore it off, and slapped it on the counter in front of me. The amount was $5,000.
“Time for you to hit the road, Mr. Logan.”
I BRUSHED my teeth, gathered together my kit, and returned to the main house. I wanted to apologize to Hub for casting aspersions, but there was no one home. Walker, I assumed, had driven his granddaughter to school, and Crissy was not yet back from jogging. I jotted a note that said simply, “Blue skies—Logan,” placed it on the kitchen counter, and left through the front door, making sure it was locked behind me.
Across the street, Major Kilgore, U.S. Marine Corps retired, was hosing down a silver Lincoln Town Car sporting a bumper sticker that proclaimed global warming to be a hoax of the liberal left. He paused to watch me toss my duffel in the back of the Escalade.
“Your pal’s no hero,” Kilgore yelled. “He’s a jerk.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
I climbed in, cranked the ignition, turned to look over my shoulder, and began backing out of the Walkers’ long driveway. Kilgore slammed down his hose with the water still running and came storming toward the Escalade before I’d reached the street.
His eyes were like pinballs, bouncing around in their sockets. My sightline went instinctively to his hands, which appeared empty. But as we converged, he dug into the right front pocket of his Bermuda shorts. I had no intention of waiting to find out if he was packing or merely playing pocket pool. I cut the wheel sharply and drove off the driveway in reverse, onto the Walkers’ lawn, angling straight for him. He was a half-second from being flattened by 5,800 pounds of Motor City metal when I cut the wheel again, just missing him, as he leapt sideways to avoid being hit, like Superman jumping through a window.
I stood on the brakes, slammed the SUV into park and jumped out. Kilgore was lying on the grass, stunned and gasping but otherwise unscathed. In his right hand was a piece of paper he’d removed from his pocket.
“You could’ve killed me!”
“The operative word being could’ve.”
I tried to help him up, but the major would have none of it. He got to his feet, dusting himself off, livid. The paper in his hand was some story he’d snagged off the Internet detailing how Georgia’s Congressional delegation had expended no shortage of political juice to help get Hub Walker the Medal of Honor.
“They call him a hero,” Kilgore said, “but a real hero would never block his neighbor’s view with his goddamn trees!”
I assured the major that I would blast off letters straight away to the White House, the Pentagon, and, time permitting, the International Court in the Hague, supporting his assertion that Walker be stripped of his medal given such egregious violations of neighborhood decorum.
“Thanks,” Kilgore said, a bit surprised that I saw things his way.
“Don’t mention it.”
Hub Walker was right about one thing: his neighbor was crazier than a three-day weekend in Reno.
I called Mrs. Schmulowitz as I drove away. Her answering machine picked up. The message was unmistakably hers:
“You have reached the Schmulowitz residence. This call may be recorded or monitored for quality and training purposes. If you do not wish for this call to be monitored or recorded, then let this facacta machine—which has too many buttons and numbers that are too small for me to read them all—know that you do not wish to be recorded or monitored when you leave your message. Thank you for calling.”
Beep.
“Hello, Mrs. Schmulowitz, Cordell Logan here. I’m calling to find out how you’re doing after your surgery. Hope you’re doing great. Also, I’m wondering whether that cat who lets me live with him ever showed up. Please let me know if you get a chance. You have my number. Shalom.”
I found an ATM machine not far from the Taco Bell I’d visited the night before and deposited Walker’s check before he changed his mind and put a stop-payment on it. It took me three tries to punch in my PIN correctly. I was more tired than I realized.
The beach was two blocks away. I hooked a right past Hornblend Street, found abundant free parking outside a CVS pharmacy, secured the Escalade with the key chain remote, and was soon lying on soft, warm sand. The ocean was sapphire. I closed my eyes and tried not to think. All I wanted to do was sleep. And I did, for five minutes, until retired airline pilot Dutch Holland called.
“I lied to you,” he said. “I was running my mouth. I didn’t see anybody tinkering with your airplane. I can’t hardly see my hands in front of my face anymore. Macular degeneration. You got any idea what that feels like, knowing you’ll never fly again?”
“No, sir, I don’t. But I’m sure it’s not pleasant.”
“It was my pal, Al Demaerschalk. He was the one wh
o saw your airplane that night. He can’t hear worth a hoot anymore but his eyes are still sharp. He told me what he saw and I told you like I’d seen it myself. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted to feel like a big man. Been awhile since I was.”
Holland said he’d been sitting outside his hangar the night before the crash, just as he’d told me originally, only he’d left out the fact that Al had been there, too. It was around nine o’clock, Holland said, when Al noticed the pickup truck drive onto the tarmac. Somebody got out, opened the Ruptured Duck’s cowling, did something to the engine, got back in and drove off. Vehicles of all kinds come and go on the flight line at all hours. Neither man thought much about it until the next day, Dutch said, after my crash. And even then, he and Demaerschalk failed to make a connection between the crash and what they’d seen the night before until after I happened to meet them at lunch.
“I couldn’t tell you for sure,” Holland said, “but with those eyes of his, I wouldn’t be surprised if Al saw more’n he let on, even to me. Hard to say, though. He didn’t want to get into it. You can’t really have a conversation with him these days. He just can’t hear.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before, Dutch?”
“Al keeps a room with his son and daughter-in-law, over at their house in Point Loma. They’ve been talking about taking away his car before he hurts himself, and putting him in the home. So he’s been staying in my hangar with me. He didn’t want anybody to know where he was at.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“He’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“Took off. Says he’s afraid whoever messed with your plane might come after him. He also thinks it’ll make his kids madder at him than they already are, give ’em one more reason to put him in the home.”
“I understand, Dutch, believe me, but Al’s a pilot. You harm one pilot, you harm all of us. You damage one plane, you damage them all. I can’t believe he’d sit by and let that happen, do you?”
