Hot Start

by David Freed

  TWENTY-TWO

  Back in Rancho Bonita, Birdwell’s Market & Deli wasn’t serving lunch yet. This is what the wanna-be rock star behind the counter with the apron and the Mohawk and the giant holes in his earlobes told me when I attempted to order a corned beef on rye.

  “Check your clock, dude,” he said dismissively. “It’s still breakfast time.”

  I explained that my aging landlady was recuperating from heart surgery, and that even though Birdwell’s sandwiches were notoriously overpriced, they were the best in town and she loved them because they reminded her of Brooklyn.

  “I’m willing to pay whatever it takes to get one,” I said. “Not at lunchtime. Now.”

  The rock star wouldn’t budge, not even when I offered him ten bucks on the side for his troubles.

  “Wish I could, man,” he said. “Those are, like, the rules.”

  My impulse was to grab him by his giant ear holes and, like, rewrite the rules, but then what kind of wanna-be Buddhist would that have made me? I grabbed a folded, laminated menu from one of several kept in a little stand beside the cash register.

  “It says here you serve corned beef and eggs.”

  “Sure do. Crazy good hash too. Homemade.” He picked up his order pad, pen in hand. “Would you like hash browns or home fries with that?”

  “We’ll get to the potatoes in a second. What’s my choice on the toast?”

  “White, wheat, pumpernickel, sourdough, rye, raisin, bagel, English muffin, blueberry muffin, bran-apple muffin.”

  “OK, I’ll take two orders of corned beef and eggs. Hold the eggs, hold the potatoes, and slap the corned beef on rye bread, untoasted. Think you can do that?”

  I dangled the ten-spot.

  He reached across the counter for it. “I don’t see why not, man.”

  “Outstanding. That’s to go, by the way.”

  “You got it,” he said.

  “WHAT, NO mustard?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Schmulowitz. I forgot the mustard.”

  “Don’t sweat it, bubby. No big whoop. I’ll take it straight. What a mensch you are for bringing me a sandwich. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.”

  She ate in small bites, sitting in her bed, chewing carefully, savoring the corned beef the way people in TV commercials always do when they eat anything delicious, with eyes closed and blissful smiles.

  “If Nurse Ratched out there catches us we’re gonna both be in a world of trouble,” I said with my mouth full. “Just a hunch, but I’m pretty sure the hospital dietician isn’t real big on corned beef.”

  “Not to worry. I got every nurse on the floor wrapped around my pinky. They all think I’m related to Leonardo DiCaprio. His great aunt. On his mother’s side.”

  “What would make them think that?”

  “Because I told them I was. Celebrities get first-class service wherever they go. Restaurants. Airplanes. Disneyland. I’m thinking, why not hospitals, am I right?”

  There was a crisp knock at the door and in walked her heart surgeon, Dr. Afridi. A stethoscope was draped over the shoulders of his double-breasted suit coat.

  “Good morning, young lady. How are we feeling today?”

  “Great, now that I got some real food,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, making no effort to hide her sandwich. “The food around here stinks. I’d go on a hunger strike, but that would be an improvement on the menu.”

  The doctor listened to her heart and told her she was making excellent progress.

  “Mazel tov,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “How soon can I bust out?”

  “Perhaps tomorrow,” Dr. Afridi said. “More likely, the day after. But you won’t be going home, Mrs. Schmulowitz. You’ll be going to a rehab for a while, until we know you’re strong enough to go home.”

  “I’ll show you strong.” She started climbing out of bed.

  I stopped her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Challenging this joker to a push-ups contest.”

  “Please, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” Dr. Afridi said. “You must rest.”

  “Dr. Afridi’s right, Mrs. Schmulowitz. You’re being a tad difficult. You can challenge him later.”

  She sat back reluctantly. She didn’t mean to cause trouble, she said; she was just getting bored. She offered the doctor half her corned beef sandwich to make peace. He thanked her but said he was a practicing vegan.

  “Listen,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, “I got nothing against leaf eaters. But if the Woman Upstairs didn’t want us eating animals, she wouldn’t have made them all out of food.”

  Dr. Afridi said he’d be back in the morning and promised not to rat her out to the nursing staff about the corned beef.

  After he left, she said, “I wish you’d find somebody nice and settle down before I move on to the next dimension, somebody who knows how to cook good brisket and knows football, who could make you happy. I wish I could rewind the clock fifty years, and that somebody was me.”

  “Me too.” I leaned over and kissed her forehead. Mrs. Schmulowitz was many things, but overly serious was rarely one of them. I wasn’t sure what had brought it on. I didn’t ask.

  She wiped off a few crumbs with the back of her right hand. “Anyhow, the good news is, I’m not planning on visiting my various dearly departed ex-husbands anytime soon, may they all rest in peace, so we’ve got plenty of time to snag you the catch of your dreams. What about that gal detective down in San Diego with the body, the one you’ve been seeing on and off? What’s her name again?”

  “Alicia.”

  “That’s right. Alicia. So what’s going on with you two kids? Should I keep my fingers crossed? What about sexual compatibility? Sex is a very important part of a relationship, you know. Any hang-ups there? You can talk to me, bubby. Trust me, if there’s one thing I know, it’s hang-ups.”

  Imagine confiding the details of your love life to your grandmother, and you can begin to understand the extent of my discomfort as I stood there.

  “We’re good friends,” I said. “Whether it moves on to the next level I guess you could say remains to be seen.”

  “Well, if you need any pointers,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, patting me on the cheek, “you let me know. Meanwhile there are some good-looking RNs running around this hospital, I’m here to tell you. I might try fixing you up with one of them. You know what they say about nurses, don’t you?”

  I actually have no idea what they say, but I returned her wink like I did.

  THE DOME of high pressure that had dominated Rancho Bonita for what seemed like weeks was finally beginning to break down. An ocean breeze, soft and moist, wafted in over the coast, bringing with it low, scudding clouds and a tangible air of relief. Outside the hospital, finches tittered busily in the trees. People seemed to be smiling more, with a lilt in their steps, as if all of their cares had suddenly been erased. This included the zaftig parking enforcement officer who was slapping a ticket under my truck’s windshield wiper.

  “What’s this for?” I demanded.

  “You’re parked in a loading zone.”

  “I was visiting a friend in the intensive care unit,” I said. “She just had heart surgery.”

  “Not my problem,” the meter maid said, beaming, as she got back in her double-parked, three-wheeled scooter. “Isn’t this weather amazing? This is why we all live here. You have yourself a great day.”

  “Yeah,” I said, staring at the $79 fine spelled out on the back of the ticket, “you too.”

  That’s when Buzz telephoned. Per my suggestion, he’d tasked his people with digging through Congressman Walton’s voting record. They’d struck pay dirt. Buried deep in the Department of Defense’s current budget, under an addendum to something called the “NATO Support and Security Acquisitions Program,” Buzz’s team had stumbled on a line-item expenditure for $184 million covering the purchase of seven Praha Aeronautika J-266 Blesk jet fighters. The aircraft were to be used by NATO to help train Belgian and Italian military pilots.

>   Walton had been directly responsible for getting the sale approved, Buzz said, and was later “handsomely compensated” by none other than Emil Sokol. This is how it worked:

  Conference committee reports filed in the Congressional Record showed that while lawmakers wrangled over the Pentagon’s budget, Walton had reached out to ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, lobbying them to consider the US acquisition of Praha aircraft.

  “In a global economy, and in an era when domestic defense contractors routinely pad their proposals by billions,” Walton wrote to Arizona Republican John McCain, “it is vital that our citizens receive the greatest value for their hard-earned tax dollars. Approving the purchase of excellent, affordable aircraft made by Praha Aeronautika for US military training purposes would send an invaluable message to Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and other major defense contractors, that waste in federal spending will no longer be tolerated.”

  Walton’s efforts to persuade Congress that it needed to equip American military forces with Czech-made jet trainers gained little traction; if McCain responded to his letter, it was not entered into the official record. Walton appeared to have had substantially greater success dealing directly with the Defense Department, where NATO-designated funds were later earmarked to buy the Czech-built jets. The expenditure was among thousands buried in a three-inch thick, $615 billion budget package that nobody in Congress apparently ever actually read.

  Searching through computerized lists of federal election campaign contributions, Buzz’s people had found that on the very day that Walton and other House members voted overwhelmingly to approve the Defense Department budget, a prominent Washington-based lobbying group, Greenwood-Fetherling, LLC, made a $100,000 donation to Walton’s reelection campaign.

  “And you’ll never guess,” Buzz said, “who one of Greenwood-Fetherling’s major clients is.”

  “I’m going to take a wild stab at it and guess Praha Aeronautika.”

  “Give that man a cookie. Federal election law says in plain language that these greedy jerk-offs we keep sending to Washington aren’t supposed to take foreign money. It’s a straight-up crime. They’re looking at serious time in Leavenworth. So foreigners like Praha Aeronautika hire DC lobbyists to cut the checks for them. Happens all the time.”

  The shadow of impropriety was there but not the smoking gun. And even if Buzz had nailed down a solid connection between Pierce Walton and Emil Sokol, it still got me no closer to finding out what, if anything, either man had to do with the deaths of Roy and Toni Hollister. The murders, however, didn’t matter to Buzz. All he cared about was carrying out his mandate from the White House: to make Walton quit before the story broke and he became a political liability. His connection to Sokol, it was hoped, would torpedo him for good.

  “You take one more crack at him,” Buzz said, “and the guy is gonna fold like a Kmart lawn chair. All you gotta do is lay it all out for him. Make him see that the ship’s going down.”

  How in Buddha’s name did I ever get involved in all this? I sighed and leaned back against my truck, closing my eyes and relishing the cooling breeze. “You still there, Logan?”

  “Regrettably.”

  “You owe me, you know.”

  “Thanks for the reminder, Buzz. I would’ve completely forgotten otherwise.”

  I wouldn’t have forgotten, of course. No way. You never forget your obligations to a battle buddy who saves your life, as Buzz had done mine more than once. Nothing you can ever do from that point forward will balance those books. And so, geared up once more to play the role of bad cop, I paid Pierce Walton another visit. I called first this time, to say I was on my way over. Amy the intern—I recognized her voice—said the congressman wouldn’t be in until after noon. I said I was on my way over, regardless.

  “May I tell him what it’s about?”

  “Tell him it’s about Praha Aeronautika.”

  “I’m sorry. Could you spell that for me, please?”

  I did. Amy the intern asked to put me on hold. Less than a minute later, she returned to say the congressman would be expecting me.

  Walton’s field office was five minutes from the hospital, but I didn’t drive over right away. I wanted to make him wait. I wanted to make him sweat. The more anxious he became, the more off-balance he would feel, and the more likely he’d be to further incriminate himself. I needed to brush my teeth and check up on my cat anyway. I drove home.

  Stan the retired postal worker next door was watering his flowers. Kiddiot was lounging on Stan’s front porch, taking a sunbath.

  “He’s over here,” Stan yelled. “Your cat.”

  “I can see that.” I whistled for him to come—Kiddiot, not Stan. He ignored me.

  “I think he prefers being over here.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “I’m just saying,” Stan said. “Hey, what was with that gunfire the other night and those cops out in the alley? Did they catch who did it yet?”

  “Not yet. I’ll keep you posted.”

  The mailbox I shared with Mrs. Schmulowitz was jammed. I hadn’t checked it in days. Inside were the usual grocery store advertisements, carpet-cleaning flyers, charity solicitations, and a few overdue-bill notices. Sorting through the stack, I found a small manila envelope with a Rancho Bonita postmark and no return address. Inside a folded note was an inch-long flash drive. The note was written in a woman’s hand. It read, “Should you need them—M, AKA N.”

  Mary, also known as Nina.

  I may not be the most tech savvy individual in the free world, but I do know what flash drives are. They’re like miniature filing cabinets. We used them all the time in the intelligence community, long before they became commonplace in the civilian world. I went inside, fired up my laptop, and inserted the drive into a USB port. Up came a list of color photographs.

  There were fifty-five in all. Nina was in some of them. Her friend Simona was in others. In some, they were together. In some, there were other young, seductive-looking women, including a short-haired blonde with angel wings tattooed on her flank. I recognized her from the photo my friend Kang had shown me.

  All of the women were nude or provocatively dressed. Most were bound and gagged. A few looked to be unconscious. Some bore ugly red marks where they appeared to have been slapped around. One of them had blood trickling from her mouth. How much of it was evidence of criminal assault or the result of consensual, sadomasochistic sex, I couldn’t say. I lack experience in either.

  The only common denominator in all of the pictures was Congressman Pierce Walton, who was engaged in various carnal acts with all of the women, sometimes two and three at once.

  He was the only one who looked as if he was having a good time. The time of his life.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Walton didn’t keep me waiting long. He emerged from his inner office flashing those big teeth, with his hand outstretched, like he was looking for my vote.

  “Mr. Logan,” he said, putting on his best face for the benefit of Amy the intern behind the reception desk. “C’mon in.”

  His office was a testament to self-aggrandizement. The walls were plastered with dozens of engraved plaques commemorating his contribution to this or service to that. These were interspersed among framed photographic collages of Walton gripping and grinning with various sports stars and Hollywood celebrities. On his desk, along with a shiny brass nameplate and a small, crossed pair of US and California flags, was a foot-long plastic model of an M1 Abrams tank. I hadn’t noticed it the first time I’d been in.

  “Make yourself comfortable, please.” Walton took up station behind the desk while I occupied the same chair I’d sat in before.

  I nodded toward the tank. “What’s the story with the Abrams?”

  “When I was in college,” Walton said, “I was in ROTC, briefly. I always wanted to command a tank, but I fell off my bike and broke my back. The army let me out of my contract. It’s not something I really talk abo
ut. Rancho Bonita isn’t the most military-minded district in the country, as I’m sure you know, having served with distinction and honor yourself.”

  I didn’t mind so much that he’d done some digging into my background. That was to be expected. It was the gratuitous flattery I couldn’t stomach.

  “So,” he said, “now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, what was so important about Praha Aeronautika you had to talk to me right away?”

  “We’ll get to that in a second.” I reached into my pocket and slid the little flash drive across his desk.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it up.”

  “I really don’t have time today for games, Mr. Logan. I already told you, I’m not leaving office unless the people of this district say so at the polls in November. They elected me to do a job, to help them lead better lives. I intend to continue doing just that.”

  “For your own good, Congressman, open up the drive.”

  Reluctantly he slipped the device into his computer. I couldn’t see the photos on his screen from where I was sitting, only the back of his monitor, but their effect on him was undeniably powerful. Walton shrank back in his chair, the palm of his left hand covering his mouth.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “From one of the women you smacked around.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You can cut the crap, Congressman. You insult my intelligence.”

  He asked me who else had seen the photos.

  “Nobody—yet,” I said. “Do the right thing and nobody ever will. You can keep that flash drive, by the way. I already made copies. Rest assured, they’re in a safe place.”

  Walton pushed back from his desk and leaned forward in his chair, head hanging down, forearms planted on his thighs, his hands clasped tightly. I couldn’t tell if he was praying or fixated on the beige carpet at his feet.

  “What I could really use is some coffee,” he said, looking up at me after several seconds. “Would you like a cup?”