by David Freed
“Who was Toni Hollister sleeping with?” I asked after they were gone.
“I don’t know his name,” Quinn said, “but I have it on good authority from a source close to the case that she was definitely having an affair. OK, now you tell me what you’ve got.”
“Whoa, hold up, Connie Chung. We’re not quite there yet. Who’s your source?”
“You don’t ask a professional reporter for her sources, Logan. Sources are confidential.”
On and on she went about freedom of the press, journalistic ethics, and how she’d go to prison before divulging the identity of any source. If I knew the first thing about how the news media functions, she explained, I never would’ve posed such a question.
“Just make sure you don’t hurt yourself falling off that soapbox,” I said.
She blushed, a response I found somewhat endearing even though I probably shouldn’t have.
“I’m still not trading any information,” I said, “until I know where yours came from.”
“That’s not fair,” she said.
“Agreed. But if life were fair, Elvis wouldn’t be dead. Every talentless Elvis impersonator would be.”
Danika Quinn blew some air through her lips and gazed at the cash registers.
“The little Vietnamese gal who does my nails.”
“That’s your source? The woman at your nail salon?”
“Hey, don’t knock it. These people are the biggest gossips around. They hear everything.”
Toni Hollister got her nails done once a week at Nail Me Good on upper California Street. The salon was tucked between a cigar shop and The Fairway, a boozy, dimly lighted restaurant known for its thick T-bones and outrageously potent martinis. Quinn got her nails done there too. They shared the same manicurist, whose adopted name was Chrissy and who, as an infant, had escaped Vietnam on a boat with her extended family back in the 1970s.
According to Quinn, Chrissy the manicurist knew almost instantly when Toni Hollister had taken a lover without Toni ever having said a word. There was a glow about her, a radiance that contrasted with the dark stories she confided about her husband, Roy, a man she described as often brooding and prone to violent outbursts. Toni never revealed to her manicurist the name of the man she’d been seeing on the side, only that he made her feel truly loved. Roy, Toni said, had stopped doing that a long time ago.
“I realize it’s a pretty thin lead,” Quinn said. “Nobody at the nail place wants to go on camera, but if I could get somebody to confirm it, flesh out the story, get the guy’s name, it could be my ticket to the networks, or at least to a top-twenty market.”
“Fingers crossed,” I said.
“OK, Logan, I gave you what I got. Your turn.”
I could’ve filled her in on the photograph I’d seen of Roy Hollister and Pierce Walton with the call girls. I could’ve told her about going to Prague, but all of that would’ve been like pouring gasoline on a journalistic bonfire. What I did instead was to confirm the rumor she’d heard earlier, that Dino Birch’s business card had been found in a sniper hide in the hills above the Hollister estate.“I knew it!” she said, slapping the table with her palm and drawing a few stares. “Logan, that’s huge. They might as well give Birch the needle right now.”
“Let’s not be too hasty,” I said. “A hasty judgment is the first step to recantation.”
“Wow. Did you just make that up?”
“Not me. The Syrian philosopher, Publilius. He was kind of a big deal back in the day.”
“Never heard of him.”
“There’s more,” I said. “You know who Grant Kessler is?”
“Why does that name ring a bell?”
“He used to be on Broadway. Starred in some of the worst musicals in history. Should’ve been arrested for overacting. Then he became an animal rights activist. Runs Creatures United in LA.”
“Oh, that guy, right. What about him?”
“I heard he has a weekend house not far from the Hollisters.”
“Really?”
I nodded.
“Are you saying you think Kessler shot them?”
I shrugged. “Hard to say.”
Quinn’s phone rang just then. Her assignment desk was calling. Two cars had collided on the summit of Chumash Pass, blocking traffic in both directions. Five people were hurt. The station needed the story for the five o’clock news broadcast ASAP.
“Thanks, Logan,” she said, then signed off and stood, gathering her things. “I’ll check it out with my sources. Let’s keep in touch.”
Not that I was happy innocent motorists had been injured, mind you, but I was glad she left. Something about her definitely gave me the creeps.
OUT AT the airport, I touched up the Ruptured Duck nose faring with a can of white spray paint while the sun slid majestically into the Pacific. Sitting there on the tarmac by myself, mangling the lyrics of the Eagles’s “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” I found myself about as close to relaxed as I ever get. No real Buddhist would’ve called my state of mind at that moment Zen or even Zen-like. My brain was still in high gear, trying to process who might’ve killed the Hollisters and why, but the moment offered something of a distraction, and that was good. I may have even smiled.
An airport can do that to a pilot. I found myself remembering the first time I’d set foot on one. It was a Saturday in spring. Crop dusters were taking off and landing at the small airfield about two miles south of the sugar beet farm where I was living at the time in eastern Colorado with my latest foster family. After I’d weeded their vegetable garden, milked their dairy cows, fed their chickens, washed their tractor, and mopped the farmhouse floors upstairs and down, I was granted permission to ride my hand-me-down Stingray to the airport and watch the planes for an hour or so before supper. I was eight years old.
As it turned out, one of the crop dusters, a good old boy with an unlit cigar in his mouth, saw me sitting cross-legged beside the dirt runway and asked if I wanted to go for a ride. He didn’t have to ask twice. Up we went in a beat-to-hell yellow biplane, a single-seat Grumman Ag Cat, me sitting in his lap, my legs straddling the stick. Leaving the earth for the first time was existential. The flight lasted maybe fifteen minutes. The effect lasted a lifetime.
I watched a SkyWest regional jet out over the ocean, a Bombardier CRJ700, turn inbound on the visual approach to Runway Two-Six. The jet’s ground track and altitude changes were so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable. The landing was soft as butter. Whoever was at the controls painted it on. I assumed she was female; male pilots rarely exercise so deft a touch. We tend to abuse objects, inanimate and otherwise. Which got me thinking about Alicia Rosario down in San Diego.
I dialed her number.
“Hello, this is Alicia.”
Somehow, I thought I’d gotten her voice mail. I waited a few seconds for the standard, “Leave a message after the beep,” but it never came. I started to leave a message anyway.
“Hey, Logan here. Just wanted to say I’m very sorry about the way our last conversation ended, and that I’m still hoping we can get together soon.”
“When might that be?” she responded, surprising me.
“I thought I got your machine.”
“Obviously you didn’t.”
“Obviously.”
Silence.
“So anyway,” I said, “I still want to get together.”
“In this century?”
“Is that sarcasm I detect, Alicia?”
“More like disappointment. I thought we had something, Logan, or at least the potential of something. I’m starting to think maybe I was wrong.”
“You weren’t wrong, Alicia. It’s just that we’re both busy with work, and we happen to live 250 miles apart. That can make things challenging.”
“Maybe we should just forget it.”
“I don’t want to forget it. I like you, Alicia. I want to get to know you better. But for this to work, whatever this is, it might require some patience on both our par
ts.”
“That doesn’t answer the question,” she said.
“That being?”
“You told me you’d check your schedule and find some time to come down to San Diego.”
“I told you. I need to finish up a few things here first.”
“When? Next week? Next month? You have to do better than that.”
“I don’t know when, Alicia. Soon, I hope.”
She sighed and said nothing. We were back to the proverbial square one.
“Hello?”
“Look,” she said, “do whatever you want, Logan, but please do us both a favor: Don’t call me again until you’ve figured out your oh-so-busy schedule and when you might be able to squeeze in a little time for me.”
“Please don’t be this way, Alicia.”
“I have to go,” she said.
And then she did.
During my fourth and final year at the Air Force Academy, after finally mastering time management, I carved out an hour each day to read. Not for classwork, but pleasure. Among other authors, for whatever reason, I went on a Joseph Conrad jag. Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent. Lying there in my bunk at Sijan Hall, I read virtually everything the guy ever wrote. I marveled at his prose, his skill at plumbing the depths of his characters’ souls in an indifferent universe. A quote had stuck with me ever since. “Being a woman’s a terribly difficult task,” Conrad wrote, “since it consists principally in dealing with men.”
I wondered if Alicia had read Conrad too.
As I finished up spray-painting the Duck, admiring my handiwork in the fading light, Eric Ivory’s bright orange “Immaculate Wings” panel truck approached, driving along the taxiway fronting a row of aluminum T-hangars to the east. He stopped when he was abeam my airplane. His window was open. A toothpick was wedged in his mouth.
“Hola, Logan.”
“Hola, yourself.”
“Working on the ol’ ship, huh?”
“It never ends.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“How goes it with you?”
“Oh, you know, just like it ever was,” Ivory said. “Just got done cleaning Oscar Monier’s Pilatus. Talk about a dirty airplane. You ever met Oscar?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Nice guy. Owns about half of downtown Pasadena. Lives down in The Knolls. Got a Bentley and a Ferrari.”
“And one fine airplane in that Pilatus,” I said.
“Definitely. I guess he ran into some pretty good turbulence south of San Jose. Both kids got airsick. Blew lunch all over the cabin. Spaghetti and corn dogs.”
“Poor kids.”
“Are you kidding? Poor me. Who do you think had to clean all that mess up? I mean, I got paid, but still . . .”
I smiled.
Ivory told me he was thinking about working on his pilot’s certificate and buying an airplane, a Cirrus or possibly a Mooney. Something fast.
“I thought you told me you got airsick,” I said.
“I do,” he said, “but, you know, I got to thinking about what you said the other day, how it’s not flying that’s dangerous, it’s crashing? I decided, what the hell, can’t run away from fear your whole life, right? Besides it’s something I always wanted to do, so yeah, I’m definitely thinking about it.”
I commended him on his courage and cautioned him on the potential expense. Even used, the airplanes he mentioned could easily run six figures. Why not consider a more affordable bird, like mine? That’s how most new pilots start out, I said, flying rattletraps.
Ivory cocked his head and grinned. “Are you trying to sell me your airplane, Logan?”
“Me? Never. The Duck’s my brother, not to mention my meal ticket. All I’m saying is, flying isn’t cheap. It may not cost as much as booze and women, but it’s close.”
“I appreciate the warning, but I wouldn’t be worrying too much about that on my account,” Ivory said. “I’m doing pretty OK right now money-wise, making some decent coin. I’d like to start taking some lessons from you, if you’re up for it.”
“You got it. Soon as it cools off a little and it’s not so uncomfortable up there, let’s do it.”
“Definitely. I’ll be in touch.”
We shook hands. Ivory got back in his truck. Then I remembered.
“One thing before I forget,” I said. “Didn’t you tell me you were tight with Toni Hollister?”
“Pretty tight, yeah. Why?”
“There’s a rumor floating around town she was having an affair. She never talked to you about anything like that, did she?”
Ivory narrowed his eyes. “Even if she did, I don’t see what business that would be of yours, Logan, or anybody else.”
“Actually, it would. If she had been involved with somebody, it could give the police another direction to start looking as far as who killed her and Roy.”
“Do the cops know about this?”
“Beats me. I haven’t told them.”
Ivory grinned. “What, you’re now part of the investigation?”
“Somebody asked me to look into a couple of things as a favor, that’s all. No biggie.”
Ivory tossed his toothpick out the window onto the tarmac. “Yeah, well, Toni never said anything to me about anything like that. All I know is, she was a class act. If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon let it go at that. The woman’s dead. It wouldn’t be right, spreading around a bunch of gossip about her, would it?”
“I hear you.”
“Well, anyway, you have yourself a good evening, Logan. Hopefully, it starts cooling off even more. I’m tired of baking my brains out every day.”
“Roger that. Take care, Eric.”
He drove on.
I made sure the Duck’s tie-down lines were good and tight, tossed what was left of the spray paint in my truck, and headed home to feed Kiddiot, but not before stopping off at the hospital to check on Mrs. Schmulowitz. Her condition was unchanged: still critical, still in isolation.
If I were a praying man, which I’m not, I might’ve requested divine intervention on her behalf, but whether there is or isn’t a higher authority, probably the last thing he/ she appreciates is sinners and nonbelievers asking for favors. I bought a half-dozen pink roses in a fake crystal vase at an obscenely inflated price from the hospital gift shop, jotted a note that said, “Football season is closer than you think, xoxo, Cordell,” and had the flowers delivered to Mrs. Schmulowitz’s floor.
Walking to my truck, it began to rain. We’re not talking deluge or even measurable precipitation. A few drops, really, barely enough to wet the sidewalk, yet the effect was transformative. I could feel the temperature dropping. By the time I got home, with fans going and windows open, my apartment was almost habitable.
Kiddiot was nowhere around. I cleaned out the old dried food in his bowl, which he hadn’t touched, and replaced it with fresh new food, which I knew he wouldn’t touch either. No cat lover could ever say I didn’t try.
I took a shower, turned on the radio, and opened some vegetable beef soup, eating it cold from the can, thus saving myself having to wash dishes and helping to save the planet at the same time. The truth was, I was feeling less environmentally conscientious than I was lazy.
Reports on the big car crash up on Chumash Pass led the local news. There was nothing on the Hollister case, no follow-ups, no new developments. I felt a certain relief in that. Call it a respite. All I wanted to do was chill and not have to think about anything substantive for a while. Just veg. That ambition lasted less than ten minutes. My phone vibrated.
“Is this Logan?” said the voice on the other end. He sounded young.
“It is.”
“Mr. Logan, Evan Gantz. I used to fly for Roy and Toni Hollister. You e-mailed me a few days ago.”
“Thanks for getting back to me.”
Gantz said his sister was getting married in Riverside, east of Los Angeles. He’d be there for the next three days, though the
only free time he had was the following morning. Would I be willing to come out to talk to him in person?
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but I don’t know who you are or why you’re wanting to talk to me about this, and the only way I’m willing to do that is face-to-face. I hope you understand.”
“I do. I’d probably be just as cautious.”
We arranged to meet at 1100 hours at West Coast Air Service, the FBO at the Riverside airport. I hoped the cooling trend held. Cooler air would likely mean smoother air and a more comfortable flight. The little nerdy weather guy I usually watched on local TV, who over-enunciated every word and always got way too excited describing the jet stream, said that all of California was in for milder conditions. I had my doubts. I’d found his forecasts to be about as accurate as horoscopes. I made plans to get a full weather briefing over the phone the next morning from FAA Flight Service before launching.
For the first time in many nights, I didn’t feel the need to sleep outside. Inside the garage, the temperature was almost tolerable. I pulled back the top sheet, turned off the lights and bedded down. Kiddiot joined me instantly, announcing his presence with his usual high-pitched chirp.
“Who invited you up here, you worthless pelt?” I said and reached out to pet him.
He sniffed my hand like it was diseased, then walked away and curled up near my feet—out of reach, as if I’d offended him.
I dreamed about strafing Iraqi armor and about polar bears with psychedelic coats who spoke English with French Canadian accents. I dreamed about the first time I kissed Savannah, the softness of her lips, the way she pulled back and favored me with the sweetest smile I’d ever seen, as though surprised by how good that kiss had felt.
The taste of her lips was full on my brain as I awakened to the crack of gunshots.
SEVENTEEN
They came in quick succession, two rounds that penetrated the wall less than six inches apart. The first passed through without hitting anything and exited by way of my bathroom window, shattering the glass and ending up who knows where. The second bullet would’ve probably taken off the top of my head had the first shot not prompted Kiddiot and me to hit the deck. With tires squealing outside in the alley, I grabbed my snubnose .357 from under the bed and headed out the door, crouching along the dog-eared pickets of the privacy fence and out the back gate, ready to fire—but car and shooter were gone.
