by David Freed
My octogenarian landlady, Mrs. Schmulowitz, was visiting some of her former fellow junior high school teachers back East for a week and wouldn’t be returning until the next day. Kiddiot and I had the entire spread to ourselves—only it was too uncomfortably warm to stay indoors for very long. Mrs. Schmulowitz’s tidy, 1920s bungalow felt like a sauna. The two-car converted garage I rented out back was even hotter. I could’ve baked donuts in there. Had I not been on the wagon, I might’ve found refuge in an air-conditioned wine bar, of which there was no shortage in Rancho Bonita, and whiled away the evening in lubricated comfort. I took off my shirt instead amid the walled privacy of Mrs. Schmulowitz’s tiny backyard and lay down in the rope hammock under her oak tree. There was not even the hint of a breeze.
Within seconds, Kiddiot jumped up on me.
“It’s a hundred degrees out here. I don’t need some overheated pelt sitting on me right now. Please get off.”
My rotund orange tabby, with his undersized brain and oversized ego, yawned dismissively, then began bathing himself on my chest.
“Did you not hear what I just said?”
He ignored me. He always did.
Robert Heinlein, the great science fiction writer, once said that women and cats will always do as they please, and that men and dogs should just get used to it. Rooming with Kiddiot, I had struggled over the years to embrace Heinlein’s advice. Some days were more challenging than others. I had resigned myself to letting him stay where I was when the cell phone in my pocket vibrated, prompting Kiddiot to dig his claws into my stomach—ouch—before jumping off.
I dug out my phone and read the caller’s name: Gil Carlisle, my former-father-in-law.
“How’ve you been, Cordell Logan?” he asked in that West Texas twang of his.
“No complaints, Gil. You?”
“Wish I could say the same. Listen, you got a second or two?”
“Sure.”
When we’d last spoken, Carlisle had told me to burn in hell, or words to that effect. He’d had ample reason. My ex-wife, his daughter, Savannah, had died because of me, killed brutally in retribution after I had allowed myself to get sucked in to an investigation that I never should’ve. Savannah and I had been planning to remarry when it happened. I couldn’t save her and Carlisle couldn’t forgive me. Not that I could have expected him to. I couldn’t forgive myself. Two years had passed since Savannah’s death. The scars were still fresh. If there was a hole deep enough to bury that kind of pain, I had yet to find it.
“I’m not calling to talk about Savannah,” he said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not sure what I was thinking.”
“Hell,” he said with a little chuckle, “that pretty much sums up my state of mind most all the time.”
He was lying, of course. Gil Carlisle knew what he was thinking and doing every waking minute of every day. One doesn’t become a megawealthy oil magnate, with penthouses in Houston and Las Vegas, a chalet in Aspen, and a chateau in Italy’s lake country, by being dazed and confused.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “You ever heard of an animal rights activist name of Dino Birch? He lives out in your neck of the woods.”
“I know who he is. He’s all over the local news.”
“National too. There was a story in this morning’s New York Times. What you might not know is that Dino’s my nephew by marriage. My sister Norma’s youngest son.”
“That would make him Savannah’s cousin.”
“Yes, it would,” Carlisle said.
“I don’t recall Savannah ever mentioning she had a cousin Dino,” I said.
“Doesn’t surprise me. I doubt they ever met. The family’s not all that close, as I’m sure you may remember.”
“I remember.”
Through the oak branches, I watched a crescent moon play hide and seek behind skittering wisps of high cirrus. Somewhere far off, down in the direction of the beach, mariachi music played.
“In any case,” Carlisle said, “I need you to do me a small favor. But before you say yea or nay, please understand I won’t hold it against you if you tell me no.”
The reality was that I would’ve done just about anything for him at that point in my life. How can you even begin to repay a parent after losing his daughter? He knew that. He knew the answer before he even asked the question.
“Whatever you need, Gil,” I said.
“You’re a flight instructor, Cordell, not some kind of investigator. I get that. But we’re both well aware that you’ve spent a fair bit of time working, shall we say, ‘behind the scenes,’ and there’s no denying that. I need you to talk to Dino, get a feel for whether he did what the police are saying or not, before my sister makes me pony up a lot of money for some big deal defense attorney dream team. If he did do this, I’d just as soon not have to underwrite the boy’s legal representation. Far as I’m concerned, if he’s guilty, he can sink or swim with the public defender. Just get me the straight dope on what went down out there so I can make some intelligent choices on this end. You think you can do that for me?”
I told him I would. He offered to pay me whatever I needed for my time and expenses. I told him I wouldn’t take his money.
“You’re a regular stand-up hombre, Cordell,” he said. “I’ve always known that. Now, I’ve already spoken to Dino about you. He’s looking forward to filling you in on his side of the story.”
Carlisle gave me his nephew’s cell phone number. I grabbed the pen from my cargo shorts, jotted down the number on the back of my hand, and told him I’d make contact first thing in the morning.
“You don’t know how much I appreciate this,” he said. “I know my sister will too.”
“The least I could do,” I said.
He knew what I was getting at.
A long silent moment passed between us. I thought at first he was going to tell me he forgave me for what had happened to Savannah, but that would’ve been asking too much. Gil Carlisle was above all else a businessman. He’d called me not out of concern for his kin or as a gesture of long-contemplated reconciliation, but as a potential cost savings.
He cleared his throat.
“Y’all got my number, Cordell. Keep me posted.”
“Wilco.”
Then the line went dead.
ANY AMBITIONS of visiting Dino Birch the next morning were cut short when he was arrested later that night on suspicion of double murder.
Rancho Bonita police had mobilized their SWAT team for the mission but they needn’t have bothered. Birch was taken into custody without incident at his apartment behind the Amtrak station on lower California Street. A television reporter named Danika Quinn had been monitoring the police scanner in her newsroom, raced to the scene, and videoed the big arrest on her smartphone, thus scooping the competition. Her news director would’ve sent a cameraman to accompany her, but recent layoffs at the station had left only three camera operators on staff. None was on duty, and nobody in station management was willing to pay overtime.
As the burly, handcuffed Birch was escorted in his pajama bottoms to a Rancho Bonita police cruiser, Quinn, a lanky brunette with fashion-model looks and the sensitivities of a Rottweiler, tossed him the obvious reporter question: “Did you do it? Did you kill the Hollisters?”
“I might be stupid,” Birch said, lowering himself into the backseat of the patrol car with a cop protecting the top of his head, “but I’m not crazy.”
Her story made the tail end of the station’s eleven o’clock broadcast.
“Reporting live from the scene, Danika Quinn, your Central Coast Action News.”
I turned off the 1960s-era console television in Mrs. Schmu-lowitz’s living room, a shrine to grandmotherly tchotchkes if there ever was one. Even with all the windows open, the house was still a sweatbox. I’d braved the heat and ventured inside to water her plants, as she’d asked me to do while she was away in her native New York. I don’t own a TV myself, but I do feel the
need to tune in occasionally, if only to remind myself why I don’t. Channel surfing, I stumbled upon an episode of Green Acres from the 1960s; a more recent so-called reality program about plasticized housewives in Beverly Hills; and numerous shows about zombies run amok. The eleven o’clock local news, insipid though it may have been, was an oasis of intelligence by comparison.
Like Mrs. Schmulowitz’s house, my garage apartment out back, with its flat roof and zero insulation, was no place to spend such a sweltering night. I settled once more into the hammock under the oak. Directly above me in a crook of the tree, Kiddiot slept in a ball, his face buried under his curled tail.
Any chance of my meeting with Dino Birch one-on-one had dropped substantially with his arrest. The police would never let me talk to him, not until he was arraigned and formally charged, and probably not even after that. He’d have an attorney by that point, court-appointed or otherwise, and any good lawyer would order him to keep his mouth shut, to discuss the case with no one. So much for the easy opportunity Gil Carlisle had given me to make some amends for Savannah’s death. I’d have to find another way to get in to see Birch.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think of the way Savannah looked when they found her. Sleep that night came fitfully and in jumpy, adrenaline-charged spurts. The smallest noise, or lack of noise, jarred me back to consciousness. When you’ve hunted bad people for a living as long as I had, you never rest, not really, especially outdoors. A cricket that suddenly goes silent can prompt the same hyperalert as incoming mortar fire. So when the two owls that had been communicating with each other for more than an hour suddenly stopped their hooting at 0215, I was instantly awake. My phone vibrated seconds later.
“Logan.”
The voice was female and robotic: “You . . . have . . . a . . . collect . . . call . . . from . . . a . . . Rancho Bonita County Jail . . . inmate. Caller, state your name.”
Another voice, this one male and very human—“Dino . . . Birch”—then the robotic voice was back. “Will . . . you . . . accept . . . charges . . . for . . . a . . . two-minute . . . call?”
“Yes.”
About five seconds of electronic clicking noises followed before Birch came on the line.
“Is this Mr. Logan?”
“Hello, Dino.”
“Hey, my Uncle Gil gave me your number. Hope I didn’t wake you up or anything.”
“You didn’t.”
“Good. Well, anyway, he said you were family—used to be, I guess—and that you flew for the air force and were some kind of spook. That true?”
I could hear male voices yelling in the background and the occasional clang of metal on metal.
“You still there?”
“Yeah, Dino, I’m here. I saw you on TV tonight. Nice pajamas.”
“You like those?” He tried to laugh. “Yeah, well, I can’t talk too long, OK? The reason I’m calling is because, as I assume you know, they’re saying I did this thing down on Madera Lane and I didn’t—not that that guy Hollister didn’t deserve it.”
“FYI, this line is probably monitored, Dino.”
“I don’t give a damn whether it is or it isn’t. I’m telling you the truth, OK? I didn’t do what they’re saying I did. You gotta get me out of here. Before they kill me.”
“Nobody’s going to kill you, Dino. You need to calm down.”
“You don’t understand. You don’t know what I know. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”
The fear in his voice was real. I tried to reassure him, but he would have none of it. He insisted his life was in danger as long as he remained in custody.
“These people, they have total power. They’ll stop at nothing.”
“What people, Dino?”
Silence.
“Talk to me, Dino.”
“You’re ex-military, I’m ex-military,” he said after a few seconds. “You’ve gotta get me out of here, Logan, please. It’s only a matter of time before—”
There were sounds of a violent scuffle on the other end— groaning and grunting. I heard Birch or somebody yell, “Hey!” This was followed by silence. Then a click. Then nothing.
A rare chill coursed down my spine.
Either Dino Birch’s two minutes had expired, or he had.
THREE
People die in jail all the time. Sometimes they kill each other. Sometimes they kill themselves. But this wasn’t Chicago or Los Angeles. This was Rancho Bonita, America’s version of Monaco. Jailed or otherwise, people in Rancho Bonita rarely die brutally and in mysterious ways. Yet another benefit of being überwealthy. Roy and Toni Hollister had been the exception. I wondered about Dino Birch.
I called Gil Carlisle and left a voice message, briefing him on my short conversation with his newly incarcerated nephew, then tried to go back to sleep. I got an hour in at most before the sun went back to work. Kiddiot was still in the tree above me, on his back, all four legs pointing upward. He was snoring.
The garage had cooled off if only a little, but enough that I could go inside for a few minutes and not feel like I was being baked alive. I showered and put on clean clothes. If only to assuage the guilt that comes of living with a cat who turns up his nose at anything you feed him, I opened a fresh can of Turkey and Salmon Dinner in Delectable Gravy, left it outside his cat door, and drove two blocks to the little corner market on Portola Street for my usual black coffee and plain cake donut. Sure, I could’ve walked, but I was melting in the heat.
The market’s immigrant owner, Kang, was standing behind the cash register, where he always stood. “Breakfast of champions,” he said, as he always said in his fractured, inconsistent English. “You get fat one of these days, Logan. Need to eat more yogurt.”
“Yogurt?” I made a face, like I always did, and spread three single dollar bills on the counter.
Our little ritual, Kang’s and mine. He had served as a martial arts instructor in the South Korean army before coming to California. Built like a fire hydrant and all business, with eyes that missed nothing, Kang was one of those guys who seemed to know everything going on around town. And if he didn’t, he almost always knew somebody who did. Half of Rancho Bonita bought their smokes or disposable diapers from his cramped, well-stocked bodega.
The morning’s newspapers were stacked neatly on two shelves next to the checkout counter: the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today and, most prominently displayed, the Rancho Bonita Sun. I picked up a copy of the Sun, which was pathetically thin, and glanced at the front page. There was nothing on Birch’s arrest, I assumed because it had broken late, past deadline. The banner story, printed under an oversized headline that other publications typically reserve for presidential assassinations, announced a local hamburger chain’s plans to expand statewide.
“You hear about the arrest last night, this animal rights guy?”
Kang shot me a look like he’d never heard a dumber question in his life and handed me back my change. “You come in here how long, Logan?”
“Years. Everybody knows you have connections all over town, Kang. You think Birch shot them?”
Before Kang could respond, two teenagers in baggy plaid shorts, knee-high white socks, and oversized white T-shirts came strolling in. One wore a black Los Angeles Kings cap pulled down low enough that it made his ears stick out. The other’s head was shaved bald. “ES” for Eastside was tattooed across the back of his skull in big block letters. If these two jokers weren’t stone cold gangbangers, I thought to myself, they were most definitely trying to look the part.
“ ’ Sup, dog,” the one with the shaved head said.
The one with the Kings hat said nothing, eyeing me like I was fresh meat. His right hand was jammed in the pocket of his shorts. He started to pull something out.
“Gun!” I yelled and moved instinctively, wrenching his right arm behind him before he could withdraw the hand and taking him to the floor, my knee in the small of his back.
“Whatchu doing,
man? I ain’t done nothing!”
“Yeah, man,” the other kid said, “he ain’t done nothing.”
Kang stood there with his mouth open. “It OK, Logan. He’s good people. Let him up.”
I patted the kid down—he was clean—and released him. He bounded off the floor, mad-dogging me.
“I ain’t done nothing, man,” he repeated. “You got no right.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, an official-looking graduation certificate of some kind.
“Straight As, bro,” he said, handing it across the counter to Kang while glaring at me.
“Me, too,” the kid with the shaved head said, handing Kane his report card. “Straight As. Well, OK, not maybe, like, straight As, but, like, no Fs, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Kang looked both certificates over, nodding approvingly. He told me how he’d caught the pair shoplifting beer a year earlier. Rather than turn them over to the police, he’d promised to beat them like piñatas if they didn’t clean up their acts. He made them show him their homework every week. Both had subsequently enrolled in a vocational training program. One was going to be a diesel mechanic, the other, a motorcycle repairman.
“We owe it all to you, Mr. Kang,” the kid with the head tattoo said.
“Good, OK, whatever,” Kang said, shaking their hands, uncomfortable in the role of savior. “Now, either you buy something from my store, or you get the hell out and don’t come back until you got a good job. And you shut door on your way out. I don’t own Wall Street stock in Edison electric. Air conditioning’s not cheap.”
“OK, Mr. Kang.”
“See you later, Mr. Kang.”
“Bye-bye, li’l homies,” he said. “Stay out of trouble or I kick you both in the behind.”
