by David Freed
“You drove all the way up here to give me this?”
“I was hoping you’d like it more than you obviously do.”
“I do like it, Alicia. It’s great. Really. Thank you.”
We kissed again, though there was little passion in it. Cicero said that gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, it is the parent of all others. My problem wasn’t being grateful. I was grateful. The problem was that deep down, if I were completely honest, I was never grateful enough. A psychoanalyst probably would’ve had a field day. Blame it on my roots. Abandoned by my drug-addled, teenage mother. Raised as a ward of the state. Shunted from one foster home to the next. A kid growing up in that environment has one of two choices. He can accept his lot and succumb to it, or he can turn overachiever, never satisfied with second best, showing the world how wrong it was about him. I’d traveled the latter route and paid a price for it. Rarely, if ever, was I truly happy with anything or anyone. Especially me.
“I’m sorry, Alicia. I didn’t mean to sound like I’m not appreciative. I am.”
She pulled away from me and slipped her left sandal on.
“Where’re you going?”
“I was here at seven o’clock and you weren’t,” she said curtly, buttoning her blouse. “I called you last night, to tell you I was coming up, so it wouldn’t be such a surprise, because I know how much you hate surprises. I called you early this morning from the road. You didn’t answer your phone. So screw it.” She strapped on her other sandal.
“Where are we going with this, Alicia?”
“Where were you last night? Why didn’t you answer?”
“Outside. I slept on the hammock because it was too hot in here, which it still is. I went to get coffee this morning and forgot my phone.”
“I never forget my phone—ever.” Alicia grabbed her badge and gun and slipped them both into the waistband of her slacks. “Who is she, Logan?”
“There is no she.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Look, Alicia, if this is about me not being effusive enough in thanking you for giving me such a heartfelt gift, I sincerely apologize.”
“I asked you a question.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“I’m a cop, Logan. Cops don’t imagine. They see.”
“You’re imagining things. I told you the truth. I was here.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I got up and poured myself a glass of water from the faucet at the sink. “You know, I didn’t realize our relationship, if that’s what you want to call it, had progressed to the point where we owed each other any explanations as to where we go and how we spend our time beyond those extremely rare occasions when we actually are together.”
Alicia stood with her eyes pooling. “You’re right, pendejo. I was imagining things.”
Then she left.
A better man might have begged her to wait, told her he hadn’t meant what he’d said about not owing each other explanations. He would’ve told her he wanted to spend more time together, to build on their relationship. He might’ve even told her that he loved her, but I knew none of it would’ve mattered. She was already gone. I doubted she was ever coming back.
GIL CARLISLE knew that his nephew, Dino Birch, had been taken into custody even before I’d left a message on his voice mail.
“My sister calls and wakes me out of a dead sleep to tell me he’s been arrested, begging me to hire him a good defense attorney,” Carlisle said over the phone. “Then Dino calls. Swears he didn’t do it. Who the hell knows about people these days, kin included. You know what I’m saying.” As an afterthought, he added, “I didn’t mean you, Cordell.”
“I didn’t know you still consider me kin.”
“You were married to my daughter.”
“We were divorced, Gil.”
“But you were getting back together. That’s the important thing.”
I didn’t feel like talking about Savannah and what had happened to her, to us. I’m sure he didn’t either.
“Who’d Dino say was trying to frame him?”
“He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. We didn’t get down in the weeds very deep. He had two minutes to talk and he sounded pretty upset. I told him I’d—”
Silence followed.
“. . . Gil? Hello?”
Nothing. I walked outside and sat down in the shade of Mrs. Schmulowitz’s back porch. Within seconds, Gil called me back.
“Goddamned AT&T,” he grumbled. “They need to get more satellites up there in outer space and stop all this dropped-call crap.”
He was somewhere over the Atlantic, jetting to a summit in Geneva with other petroleum industry executives who were all worried about the wildly gyrating price of crude oil on international markets. The way things were headed, Carlisle said, he’d barely have any financial reserves left within a year, another reason why he was reluctant to pay for his nephew’s legal counsel, especially if the prosecution’s case was a slam dunk, which is how they were making it sound on the news.
I thought about sharing with him Congressman Pierce Walton’s possible involvement in the case, but I kept my mouth shut. The more I pondered it, the more I was inclined to believe that any notion of linking Walton to a double murder based on a pornographic snapshot of questionable authenticity was preposterous.
“Don’t ask me because I won’t tell you,” Carlisle said, “but I’ve pulled a few strings to get you in to see my nephew. Hear him out, listen to what he has to say. If you think Dino’s innocent and he’s got a legitimate alibi, I need to know that. If you think he’s guilty as sin, I need to know that as well.”
“What’s your opinion, Gil? You know him. Do you think he did it?”
“Dino? Hell, son, truth be told, I can’t even remember the last time I saw him. My sister, Marleen, and her brood, drove up from Midland to my place in Aspen on vacation one summer maybe fifteen years ago. Dino’s her oldest. Good-looking boy. Tall. Was into dirt bikes and guns, as I recall. I took him skeet shooting. I do remember that. I know he was overseas for a while with the army. Not sure how much action he saw. How he ended up getting into this whole ‘save the whales’ deal is beyond me.”
Carlisle was telling me how Marleen got divorced shortly after the Aspen trip, and how hard all three of her kids took it, none harder than Dino, when our connection began cutting in and out. Words grew sporadic, then sentences. Finally he was gone. I slipped the phone into the pocket of my jeans and walked out to the street in front of Mrs. Schmulowitz’s house, where I normally park my truck.
Standing outside the two-story Tudor next door, with his suit coat hooked over his shoulder, chatting up Stan, the retired, neoconservative postal worker who lived there, was none other than local Congressman Pierce Walton. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Walton around town. Rancho Bonita isn’t exactly London. You can’t go anywhere, really, without running into somebody you know.
He was flanked by what I assumed were two of his aides. Both were young and blonde, wearing skirt suits tailored midthigh, and heels. Walton’s blue-and-yellow striped tie was loose at the collar and the sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled above his elbows—both sure signs that he’d decided to seek reelection and was out campaigning early. Rolled shirtsleeves and a loosely cinched tie tell the voters that the man they sent to Washington is working tirelessly in their behalf. Walton had that look about him as he nodded his head in adamant agreement with whatever Stan was spouting.
“Hey, Logan,” Stan shouted, “come meet your congressman.” Stan loved nothing more than debating politics with anyone unfortunate enough to engage him in conversation. I sighed and walked over.
“This is Cordell Logan. He lives in the garage back behind Mrs. Schmulowitz’s place with the nuttiest cat you ever saw.”
“Congressman.”
Same blue eyes. Same bleached teeth. Carefully coiffed hair, graying at the temples. An earnest, approachable face that fell just short of han
dsome. Walton looked much like he did in his group sex photo, only clothed.
“Call me Pierce.” He shook my hand a little too enthusiastically, like he was trying to sell me something. “Hot enough for you out here today, Cordell?”
“More than hot enough, Pierce. I just saw two trees fighting over a dog.”
He laughed the way politicians and television news anchors do, like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard, even if it wasn’t.
“Gotta remember that one,” Walton said, turning to his aides, who were both laughing too, though not quite so effusively. “Write that one down, will you, Gina?”
“Got it.” She jotted a note in a binder bearing the congressional seal.
“I was just telling the congressman how we fix the deficit,” Stan said. “Gotta cut big government, cut all these taxes, get all the welfare queens off the public dole and back to work.”
This from a man who’d spent twenty years getting paid by the taxpayers to sit on his hind end swilling endless cups of coffee in some moldy back room of Rancho Bonita’s main post office branch, whose lifetime pension and health benefits were paid for by Mr. and Mrs. America.
“Whatever you say, Stan,” I said.
Walton told us how much he enjoyed being back in his home district while Congress was in recess and “touching base with the real people who matter most.” He was going door-to-door, he said, to better understand the concerns of his constituents. Were there any issues I felt like he needed to discuss on my behalf with the president of the United States once he got back to Washington?
It was hard not to think of him in that photograph, all in flagrante delicto, as Caesar once might’ve described it. Tempted as I was to delve into his relationship with the late Roy Hollister, I didn’t. Standing on the steps outside crazy Stan’s house wasn’t the appropriate time or place.
“Actually there is one thing,” I said.
“Absolutely.” Walton glanced back at his note-taking aide. “Gina, take this down.”
Her pen stood poised as Walton turned back to me, wearing one of those overly earnest, I’m-Here-to-Listen-Please- Vote-for-Me faces.
“What I’d really, really like,” I said, “is for the president to intervene in Major League Baseball and outlaw the designated hitter rule. Pitchers may be pitchers, but they’re also baseball players. Allowing somebody else to hit for them is ridiculous. People have gone to Gitmo for less.”
He laughed like he wasn’t sure whether I was being serious or not, and promised to express my concerns to the president at the appropriate time. We both knew he was being patronizing.
I walked to my truck and drove to the county jail to see Dino Birch, wondering how much the congressman would be laughing if he knew what I knew about him.
FIVE
With its whitewashed, stucco walls and red tile roofs, Spanish is the dominant architectural style of Rancho Bonita, along with municipal construction codes that some say border on fascist. Every building plan is slavishly gone over to ensure that it conforms to the community’s carefully crafted image of a Mediterranean-like oasis. The three-story Rancho Bonita County Detention Center, perched on a hillside north of downtown amid a warren of other nondescript county government buildings, was the opposite: a shrine to utility, all concrete and concertina wire. It reminded me a little of Abu Ghraib, only without the charm.
The first thing I noticed as I turned my truck into the center’s parking lot were three television news vans camped in the tow-away zone directly in front of the jail, and a phalanx of media types waiting near the main entrance of the jail with their boom mikes and cameras. The second thing I noticed were the two dark-haired guys in a rust-bucket Chevy Nova prowling the back rows. A piece of newspaper hung from the Nova’s grillwork, conveniently obscuring the front license plate from view, as if it had somehow gotten stuck there. I nosed into a parking space, putting several rows of cars between the Nova and me, and observed.
They slowly drove around the lot before circling back and eventually stopping behind a newer Honda Accord, silver, with chrome wheels. A towel hanging out of the trunk partially obscured the Nova’s back license plate. The guy on the passenger side stepped out and walked over, glanced around to make sure nobody was watching him, then peered inside the Accord. Pasty skin, ginger hair shorn close, midtwenties, husky, wife beater T-shirt, abundant tattoos. He glanced around once more, then pulled a long flat metal rod out from the leg of his saggy jeans and shoved it down into the driver’s side door of the Accord. I picked up my phone.
“Nine-one-one emergency operator. What is your emergency?”
“I’d like to report a car burglary in progress.”
She sounded older and mildly disinterested. “When you say ‘in progress,’ you mean they’re there now?”
“Correct.”
“OK, and this is taking place where?”
“The parking lot of the county jail, directly across from sheriff’s headquarters.” I could hear the clicking of her keystrokes over the phone. “They’re breaking into a silver Honda Accord. I can’t read the plate from my present position.”
“Across from the sheriff’s department,” she said. “Wow, pretty ballsy.”
“Indeed.”
The Accord’s door was now open. The burglar was leaning into the car, rummaging around with one knee on the driver’s seat. Red plaid boxer shorts billowed out from the top of his jeans. Then he quickly jumped into the Accord and shut the door. I provided the emergency operator a running commentary.
“He’s definitely trying to steal the car.”
“And your name, sir?”
“My name doesn’t matter right now, lady. Do you have a unit en route, yes or no, because by the look of it, these two jokers are about to be gone.”
“We do have a unit on the way, yes sir. They should be there in a couple of minutes, if not sooner. Now, if you could please just tell me your—”
I hung up, waited, and watched. I told myself not to get directly involved any more than I already was. It was up to the professionals of law enforcement to handle the rest. Only the professionals seemed to be on their lunch breaks.
I could see the Accord shudder a little—the engine turning over—then white taillights came on as the thief shifted into reverse and began backing out. Prudence dictated that I stay put. I’d done my civic duty. I’d dropped a dime. That’s probably more than most people would’ve done. But that’s the problem with the world these days. Too much prudence. Too much, “It’s not my problem,” kind of thinking. The world is a dangerous place not because of men who are dangerous, but because of those who stand by and don’t stand up.
Outside the jail, less than 100 meters away, I could see two uniformed sheriff’s deputies chatting with the reporters and began pounding on my horn, hoping to attract their attention, but nobody so much as looked in my direction.
The guy in the Accord and his accomplice in the Nova were about to get away.
“Not on my watch,” I muttered aloud which, when I thought about it later, was a pretty boneheaded thing to say considering that I was hardly on duty. No matter. Like some old dog, I was a creature of habit.
I threw my truck into gear and raced along a parallel parking row toward the exit of the lot where both cars were angling. I got there first, sliding sideways to a screeching stop and blocking the way out.
The dude in the Accord stepped out and strode toward me with rage in his eyes and a folding knife with a three-inch blade in hand. I cracked my door an inch. When he got within range, I shoved it open with my foot and knocked him to the pavement. Then I stepped out.
He rolled to his feet and was screaming, “I’m gonna kick your motherfu-,” when I booted him in the face and down he went once more, this time out cold and missing a few teeth. His partner in crime exited the Nova and came at me too, armed with an aluminum baseball bat.
“Drop it!”
I turned as the two plump deputies I’d seen moments earlier came up huff
ing and puffing from behind me with their pistols drawn, news crews close on the cops’ heels. The dude with the bat quickly did as ordered and laid down face-first to the pavement with his arms outstretched like he’d been through the drill before.
“You OK, sir?” one of the deputies asked me, his pistol trained on the bad guys while his partner handcuffed them.
“I’m good. These two jokers were stealing that Honda.”
“In front of department headquarters?” The deputy shook his head. “Man, what’s the world coming to?”
“Tell me about it.”
He nodded toward the guy whose teeth I’d knocked out and who was still sprawled unconscious on the ground.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Reality TV,” I said. “Ever seen The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?”
The deputy told me to hang tight while he and his partner secured the car thieves, and said he’d be back in a bit to take my statement. Then he yelled at the reporters and the camera people to back the hell up. One of the reporters was Danika Quinn, whose report on Dino Birch’s arrest I’d seen the night before. She was even better looking in person.
“Sir, can you tell us what happened here?” Quinn asked me, flipping her silky auburn hair away from her face and shoving a microphone into mine.
“Just taking out a little trash. Excuse me.”
I pushed past her, got back in my truck. As I did, a black-and-white sheriff’s patrol car came barreling in with its siren keening and rooftop lights flashing. Quinn and several of her colleagues had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit. The cruiser’s driver and lone occupant, a white deputy built like an NFL defensive end wearing cool-guy sunglasses, got out with his right hand on the butt of his holstered pistol, like he was ready to go to war.
“Code four, in custody,” the deputy who I’d been talking to told him, “thanks to that courageous citizen.”
When I looked over, the news people were all zoomed in on me.
BOTH CAR thieves were out on parole. Not that I cared. I was there to see Dino Birch. After explaining my actions to the cops, I was escorted inside the jail, past Danika Quinn and the rest of the press corps. Somehow, in the interim, they all seemed to have learned the real purpose of my visit, to see Dino Birch. The reporters shouted questions. I ignored them.
