Hot Start

by David Freed

  I could hear a metallic clinking that grew by the second. Somebody, or something, was coming up the trail—fast. Within seconds, the sound was accompanied by a dog barking and by a man mangling the lyrics to and melody of the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around.” His singing wasn’t off-key. He was felony off-key.

  A Labrador appeared, enthusiastically following a scent trail, zig-zagging with her nose down, into the clearing. She had a choke chain around her neck, from which jangled a small collection of tags. Obscured in shadow as I was, she didn’t see me at first.

  “Somebody’s having a good time,” I said.

  Startled, the dog skidded to a halt, backed up and began barking at me, which, mercifully, prompted her equally startled owner to stop singing.

  “Don’t worry,” the old man said, grabbing her collar, “she’s friendly. Only real danger you face is getting licked to death. Lola, chill out.”

  He was marathon runner-thin, shirtless, and wearing cargo shorts, clutching a water bottle in his right hand, his feet clad in well-worn hiking boots. A thicket of curly silver hair carpeted his chest, while a silver ponytail hung out the back of his sweat-stained, “Old Guys Rule” baseball cap. I guessed him to be nearly eighty.

  “She looks pretty harmless to me,” I said as she came running, tail thumping side-to-side, and tried repeatedly to lick me on the lips.

  “You look a little overheated,” the man said.

  “I forgot to bring water.”

  He handed me his bottle and told me to drink as much as I wanted. I took a few sips and handed it back, thanking him. His eyes were the color of gunmetal.

  “Never seen you up here before.”

  “First time,” I said. “Quite the view.”

  “That it is. On a clear day, you can see Catalina from up here.”

  He said he lived down near the road and pointed to the McMansion I’d used as a landmark to find my way up the hill. His dog was now playfully jabbing a stick against my leg, trying to get me to throw it.

  “Lola and I come up here every afternoon,” he said. “She loves it.”

  “I can tell. Sweet pooch.”

  “The sweetest. She gets me out of my studio and up here where I can clear out the cobwebs. Beats lying on the shrink’s couch. Cheaper too.”

  He said he was a painter, still lifes mostly, and that his name was Theodore Danzig, but that everybody called him TD.

  “Played a little football at UCLA back before the Civil War.” He gave me a wink and held out his right hand. We shook. “Not too often I see people up on the trail this time of the day. Too darned hot.”

  “I’m looking for something.”

  “Well, I sure hope you find it.”

  “Actually,” I said, “it’s about Roy Hollister.”

  “The big game hunter?”

  I nodded.

  “You can see his house right down there,” TD said, pointing. “Are you a detective?”

  “More or less. I’m looking for evidence.”

  He stared at the ground, nodding to himself. “Now it makes sense,” he said.

  “What does?”

  “That night, those three gunshots.”

  He told me he’d been immersed in a book, a biography of Paul Cezanne, when he’d heard a shot—pow—followed seconds later by two others in quick succession: pow, pow. He said he hadn’t bothered calling 911.

  “You hear all manner of strange stuff up here in the middle of the night,” the old man said. “Kids partying, girls screaming, laughing, guns going off, firecrackers. Hard to tell the difference sometimes. Most of the time you can’t tell where any of it’s coming from, from the way the sound bounces around all these canyons. Unless it sounds like somebody’s in real trouble, I just let it go. Maybe that night, I shouldn’t have.”

  I followed him to the edge of the clearing, to a spot behind the charred, waist-high remains of an oak tree that looked as if it had once been hit by lightning. The field of view past the stump, far down the heights, was unrestricted, all the way to the Hollisters’ swimming pool and beyond. He reached into a back pocket and retrieved a worn leather wallet, undid the fat rubber band holding the wallet together, and pulled out a crumpled business card.

  “Lola sniffed this out, right here, the day after that poor couple died down there. Don’t ask me why I kept it. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Picking up trash. Protect the earth. All that sixties stuff you never hear about anymore. But then I saw the news. I probably should’ve called the police, but I guess it just slipped my mind.”

  He handed me the card.

  “Hollister, 439 Madera Ln.” was scrawled in smeared blue ink on the back in a ragged, hurried hand, along with a local telephone number. Printed on the front of the card was “Helping Endangered Animals Thrive.” The silhouette of a black rhino formed the acronym, HEAT.

  Below the rhino was a post office box and the name, “Dino Birch, Chief Executive Officer.”

  NINE

  The army had trained Dino Birch to be a sniper. Roy Hollister and his wife had been killed by a sniper. Birch had made it his life’s purpose defending rare and exotic wild animals. Hollister had made his fortune helping facilitate the deaths of those very animals. As far as Rancho Bonita police were concerned, the discovery of Birch’s business card and what was presumed to be Birch’s handwritten notation of the Hollisters’ home address jotted on the back, were proof positive that they definitely had the right suspect in custody. As I watched police crime scene investigators scour the clearing, thanks to my tip, I wasn’t so sure.

  Only the world’s most incompetent killer would’ve accidentally left a business card behind. Granted, you hear about stupid crooks all the time—the bank robber who hands the teller a demand note written on his own deposit slip; the masked gunman who sticks up a KFC forgetting that his girlfriend is working the counter that night—but leaving your card, and with the victim’s address handwritten on the back, no less? Either Birch had been felony careless or, as he claimed, he’d been framed.

  Two detectives were questioning TD Danzig. Danzig was petting his dog, Lola, who was happily licking herself at his feet. One of the cops excused himself and walked over to me. He’d introduced himself a few minutes earlier as Daryl Kopecky. Trim, midthirties, dress shirt and tie. A .40-caliber Smith & Wesson was cradled in a pancake holster on the right hip of his khaki Dockers.

  “This was one spot we missed when we went looking up here in the hills, the shooter’s position,” he said. “We really appreciate you letting us know about it, Mr. Logan. And just for your information, we also found that bullet in the wood beam, right where you said it was.”

  Far below, I could see other detectives and police personnel milling about behind the Hollister mansion. A ladder, probably the same one I’d used, was propped beside the vine-covered trellis.

  “Looked to me like a NATO round,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” Kopecky said. “I really can’t discuss specifics.”

  “Understood. But let’s say for the sake of argument that it was a NATO round, 7.62 millimeter. According to the news, that would be the same caliber bullet the coroner found inside the Hollisters. And that to me begs the question: Does Dino Birch own a rifle of that caliber?”

  “Again, I’m sorry. I can’t discuss specifics. The investigation’s ongoing.”

  “You would’ve told me if he did own a rifle of that caliber,” I said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Let’s just say I can read people pretty well. I used to do it for a living.”

  The detective folded his arms. “Like I said, the investigation is ongoing.”

  “Without a murder weapon, your case is purely circumstantial.”

  Kopecky bristled. “We know Birch trained on the 300 Winchester Magnum when he was in the army.”

  “And a lot of Win Mags fire a 7.62 round. That still doesn’t get you where you need to be evidence-wise, not by a long shot—no pun intended.”
r />   “We have a witness who puts him at the scene shortly before the shootings occurred.”

  “Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  Kopecky was starting to lose his patience with me. “I’m still somewhat unclear, Mr. Logan, how you came to be here.”

  I explained to him for the second time my relationship with Gil Carlisle and how Carlisle had asked me to help him assess whether his nephew, Birch, was worth the expense of hiring a private defense team.

  “No, I get all that,” Kopecky said. “What I don’t get is how you knew to look up here, how you found that bullet hole in the wood, the ballistics? Because without that, there’d probably be no business card.”

  “I wouldn’t put too much weight on that card, Detective. Birch wouldn’t have left it up here. Nobody’s that dumb.”

  “You’d be surprised,” the detective said.

  “And you’d be wrong. This is the position where the shots came from, but I guarantee you, Birch didn’t leave that card up here. And he would not have fired that shot into the wood, missing his intended targets by that much. Somebody else did the shooting. Somebody who wasn’t trained in the service as a sniper.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Military snipers are taught ‘one shot, one kill’—never waste a single round and give up your position. Birch was trained as a military sniper. That bullet I found in the wood? That was the shooter’s first round. He squeezed it off to zero his weapon, minutes, maybe hours earlier, to make sure his scope was accurately sighted, to make sure he wouldn’t miss before turning the weapon on his victims. That’s something a civilian hunter would do.”

  “You just told me you’re working for Birch’s uncle. You’d say anything to defend him.”

  “If that’s true, why did I call you guys and tell you about the bullet, or this place?”

  “I don’t know,” Kopecky said. “You tell me.”

  He was eyeing me the way cops do when they’re mulling your guilt or innocence. Squinting, head slightly cocked.

  “You know, detective, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re looking at me like I’m a possible suspect.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him, waiting. People hate lapses in conversation. They compulsively fill in the gaps. Sometimes even cops say things they shouldn’t.

  “I did some quick checking on you before we rolled up here,” Kopecky said. “Your government service record is awful spooky, Mr. Logan. Restricted access, top secret authorization required. Who knows who you really are and what your real agenda is.”

  “My real agenda is getting out of this heat.” I got up from my rock and stretched the stiffness from my back. “You’ve got my number. I’m always happy to help out Johnny law. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go home and stick my head in the freezer.”

  The detective was blocking the trail. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again, Mr. Logan.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  He stepped aside.

  CUTTING THROUGH the backyard on the way to my apartment, I happened to glance over at Mrs. Schmulowitz’s back door. It was open. Through the screen door, I could see her sprawled facedown on the kitchen floor. Oh, please, no.

  I ran, bounding up the steps of the back porch and inside.

  “Mrs. Schmulowitz!”

  She wasn’t moving. I knelt beside her, careful not to move her, and pressed my fingers to her neck, hoping to find a pulse.

  “I really do need to sweep in here more often,” she said. “This floor is a mess.”

  I rolled her over. “Are you OK, Mrs. Schmulowitz? You scared the heck out of me.”

  “Don’t mind me, bubby. Just got a little lightheaded, that’s all. I’ll be fine.”

  She was gasping for breath, soaked with sweat, and clutching her left shoulder. I called 911, my own heart pounding. Then I grabbed an aspirin bottle out of her medicine cabinet.

  “When did this happen, Mrs. Schmulowitz?”

  “When? Who knows? Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Good gravy, will you look at this floor?”

  “The floor can wait, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

  I poured her a glass of water from the sink and made her chew an aspirin, then pulled a seat cushion off one of the chairs and put it behind her head. Kiddiot sat in the hallway, his tail wrapped around his front paws, and watched with rapt fascination.

  “The ambulance is coming,” I said.

  “Ever hear the one about the woman who needs a new heart and the doctor tells her that the only one available is from a sheep?”

  “Now is not the time for jokes, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

  “Are you kidding, bubby? Now is the perfect time for jokes. So this woman agrees to have a transplant and the doctor goes with the sheep’s heart.” She paused, catching her breath. “The next day, he’s making his hospital rounds. The doctor asks her, ‘So, how’re you feeling today?’ She thinks about it for a second, then she says, ‘You know, not baaaaad.’ Get it? ‘Not baaaaad.’ ”

  “I got it. Where the hell’s the ambulance?”

  “It’s gonna be OK.” Mrs. Schmulowitz reached out and squeezed my hand, less frightened than I was. “Que sera, sera. What will be, will be. Just do me one thing.”

  “Anything.”

  “If they have to resuscitate me, give me mouth-to-mouth, whatever, just please make sure the doctor looks like George Clooney. You get to be my age, these kinds of opportunities don’t come along too often.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

  Both paramedics were female. They looked fresh out of high school. They did, however, look like they knew what they were doing and went about their work with a swift efficiency that I found comforting. Only after they’d slipped an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth did Mrs. Schmulowitz cease trying to make them laugh. Less than five minutes after arriving, they’d loaded her into their ambulance. I followed them in my truck.

  THE HOSPITAL waiting area for friends and relatives of cardiac care patients was a cut above the emergency room waiting area two floors below. There was hot coffee and air conditioning. The furniture didn’t smell of urine or blood. On the wall was a flat-screen television tuned to a Spanish language soap opera. I appeared to be the only person in the room not watching it.

  With nothing else to do, I checked my e-mail. Amid the usual useless clutter was a response from the Hollisters’ former pilot, Evan Gantz. He said he was writing on a layover in Bahrain and wanted to know what was so important that I had to speak with him urgently. The e-mail was more than four hours old. I wrote back, “European call girls and a certain Rancho Bonita congressman.”

  I forced myself to be distracted by the television, understanding very little of what was being said. As near as I could figure, the story revolved around a small-town girl with pigtails named Maria who worked for a rich family in Mexico City while being wooed by a cad named Juan Carlos. Somewhere along the way, I nodded off. Two hours later, I awakened to the heart surgeon’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Mr. Logan, I am Dr. Afridi. Let’s chat in the hallway.” He was a short, round man of Pakistani extract, in booties and blue scrubs. Nervously I arose, wiped the sleep from my eyes, and followed him out to the elevators.

  “How’d she do, doc?”

  “For an elderly woman of her age, with two occluded arteries and a calcified aortic valve, I’d have to say, not bad.”

  I smiled in spite of myself, thinking about Mrs. Schmulowitz’s cheesy sheep joke.

  “Was it something I said, Mr. Logan?” the surgeon asked.

  “No, sir.” I cleared my throat. “Is she going to make it?”

  “I’m afraid given her advanced age, the odds are against her. However, she is rather feisty, a fighter, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Fighters tend to do better in these situations. It’s hour by ho
ur. All we can do now is take the best care of her that we can and hope.”

  “I can definitely do that.”

  We shook hands. He turned to get on an elevator, then remembered something. “Oh, by the way, she did ask before the anesthesia was administered that I convey to you a message. Something about George Clooney. She said you’d know what it meant.”

  I smiled. “Please tell her I’m working on it, and that I’ll see her soon.”

  “I will. Good day, Mr. Logan.”

  “To you as well, Doctor. Thank you.”

  He disappeared behind the elevator doors as I fought back tears. You meet few people in life like Mrs. Schmulowitz. The ones who enrich you without asking anything in return, whose contribution to the better good can be measured not so much in tangible achievement as in the frequency with which they make you smile whenever you’re in their presence, and even when you’re not. The thought of losing her left a lump in my throat the size of her native Brooklyn. Hyperbole aside, that’s how I felt.

  The hospital’s cafeteria was adjacent to the lobby. The special of the day, as advertised on the freestanding chalkboard out front, was something called “seafood casserole.” It looked like something the ocean might’ve spit back. The soup du jour was french onion, which looked like an oil slick in a bowl. The menu included a selection of “heart healthy Mexican food,” a contradiction in terms if there ever was one. I ordered a turkey on rye, mustard, no mayo, with a side of macaroni salad—and I don’t even like macaroni salad. But at least it was filling.