Hot Start

by David Freed

  “You know what’s hard to believe? That the average chocolate bar contains eight insect parts, but that’s proven by science. You can Google it.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Proof,” I said.

  “You have proof of these allegations?”

  “Not me, Detective. The hookers.”

  “. . . The hookers?”

  “The ones Walton frequents, if that’s the right word.”

  “What kind of proof?”

  “Photos.”

  “Lots of people have photos, Mr. Logan, of all kinds of things. My nine-year-old photoshopped one of me the other day. You should see it. My head on Captain America’s body.”

  “I have reason to believe Congressman Walton may be complicit in the murders of Roy and Toni Hollister.”

  “Complicit?” Kopecky gave me a condescending smile. “Pretty big word for a flight instructor. What’re you now, J. Edgar Hoover?”

  I drummed my fingers impatiently on the table, doing my best to keep a cork on my rising anger. “Have you talked to Walton directly?”

  “The congressman’s on a plane back to Washington,” Kopecky said. “I did speak a short while ago to one of his aides. She said you were never in their office today.”

  “Was it Amy?”

  The detective seemed surprised I would know her name. “She’s lying,” I said. “Look, Walton undoubtedly has security cameras inside his office. Go check those out.”

  “I’d need probable cause and a subpoena for something like that,” Kopecky said. “No judge is going to issue that subpoena without good reason, and you haven’t given me any.”

  Kopecky told me that Moby Dick, whose actual name was Eugene Toleafoa, was a bouncer at a local nightclub. He had adamantly denied my allegations of having been kidnapped, and claimed that our little dust-up in the alley stemmed from an altercation that I had initiated. According to Toleafoa’s version of events, I had been walking across the street when I falsely accused him and his little brother, Tiny, of not yielding the right of way in their truck. I’d called them names, insulted their Pacific Islander roots, and hit Tiny in the head with a rock. Poor Tiny, who’d had to go to the hospital to get stitches, would be willing to testify that I’d started the whole thing. The house where I’d clobbered Tiny with the oxygen canister and from which I’d freed myself, apparently belonged to the brothers.

  “What about the hospital bed in the basement, the Velcro restraints? This guy stole my wallet, my keys. He’s probably still got them. Go search the house. Go search his truck.”

  “Again I’d need a warrant to do that.”

  Detective Kopecky tucked his pen in his shirt, picked up his notepad, on which he’d written not a single note from our conversation, and stood. The Toleafoa brothers, he said, were willing to drop the entire matter if I was. He insisted that with Dino Birch safely in custody for the Hollister homicides, the Hollister homicide investigation was all but closed.

  “The best thing you could do, for all parties concerned,” Kopecky said, “is go home and stop wasting the police department’s limited resources with baseless distractions.”

  I ached in a hundred places. Even my hair hurt. I was hungry. I was thirsty. And I was done. I didn’t have the energy or, in truth, the conviction, to keep arguing even if I knew I was right. I told myself I’d done all I could to help Dino Birch and to bring justice to the Hollisters, even if I knew I hadn’t. It was time to go home.

  Detective Kopecky walked me out of the police department. The sky was indigo, a miasma of vapor trails. I went to hand Kopecky the hand towel he’d let me borrow to stanch the bleeding below my eye.

  “Keep it,” he said.

  “What about the murder weapon?” I asked him.

  “What about it?”

  “Have you found it yet?”

  Kopecky smoldered. “We’ve already got plenty of evidence, believe me.”

  “I’ll take that as a no,” I said.

  His jaw muscles were twitching. He gave me a hard look.

  “Without that rifle, you’ve got no case, Detective. You know it and I know it.”

  “We’ll find it,” he said. “It’s only a matter of when.”

  I HAD no pocket money, no proof of identification, no keys, no revolver. But with any luck, my truck was still parked six blocks away where I’d left it that morning in front of Congressman Walton’s field office. I walked.

  My legs worked and for that I was grateful. When I thought about it, I had much to be grateful for. I was still alive, lived in a beautiful place, and had a job as a flight instructor that almost paid the bills and at which I hoped to refocus my time and attention after playing private eye. I also had sheets to sleep between at night, which was more than I could say for the homeless kid and his sad-eyed mutt I found standing beside me while waiting for the light to change at Anacortes Street, across from the public library.

  He was white, maybe nineteen, with matted shoulder-length hair the color of dirt. “Die Trying” was tattooed across his scrawny upper chest. Tied to his backpack was a hand-lettered sign that read, “Dropped off by aliens, need taco.” The dog, a shepherd mix, looked well-cared for. I’d give him that much.

  “Got any spare change?”

  “I was about to ask you for some myself.”

  He smiled, missing an incisor, and eyed my damaged face. “Dude, your nose is totally jacked up.”

  “Thanks for letting me know. I’m feeling so much better about myself now.”

  When I looked over at him, he was holding a dollar bill.

  “Here you go, man,” he said, trying to hand me the money. “Looks like you could use this more than me.”

  I thanked him and told him to keep it. It’s easy to forget sometimes the fundamental humanity in people, especially when you’ve spent years bringing down those who have no humanity. If ever I were to attain true enlightenment and evolve into what the Buddha called a “complete person,” I would first have to see more of the good in people, not their flaws. I promised myself I’d start that afternoon.

  The good news was that my truck hadn’t been towed. The bad news was there were three parking tickets on the windshield. Both doors were unlocked. The glove box was standing open, my registration and other papers scattered. The rubber floor mats had been heaped on the seats, and the carpet ripped up. Moby Dick had done a hurried but thorough job searching for the sex photos of Congressman Walton that I’d disingenuously said he would find there. What was still there was the Duck’s touch-up spray paint. I found the can still under the driver’s seat with the plastic cap removed. I also found the spare key I kept buried in the map pocket behind the passenger seat.

  I had planned to call it a day. But as I turned the ignition, I happened to look over to my left, toward Walton’s office. You’ll never guess who was walking out.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The congressman was alone and in a big hurry, half-walking, half-running toward the parking lot behind his building.

  “Representative Walton?”

  Walton blanched when he saw me and quickened his pace in something approaching panic. I caught up to him as he reached his Prius.

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you,” he said, opening the driver’s door.

  “Wrong.” I slammed it shut. “You’ve got plenty to say to me.”

  He backed up, fear written all over his face. “Assaulting a member of Congress. That’s a felony.”

  “So is drugging and kidnapping somebody, which I’m sure the local news media would have a field day with if that somebody were to leak the story. Now where would you like to start?”

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

  “I was told you were on your way to Washington.”

  “My flight leaves in forty-five minutes.” He tried once more to open the door.

  Again I slammed it.

  “Either you take your hand off my car,” Walton said, “o
r I’m calling the police.”

  Nobody needed to tell me I was walking a fine line. Walton belonged to the power elite. I was essentially a nobody with a sketchy past. If push came to shove, it would be his word against mine, but in that moment, in my rage, I honestly didn’t care.

  I grabbed a handful of his perfectly knotted tie and shoved him back against the car.

  “Either you’re going to tell me the truth,” I said, “or missing your flight is going to be the least of your troubles.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “Let’s start with hookers in Roy Hollister’s jet. We can move on to Emil Sokol and illegal campaign contributions after that. And, oh yeah, why you drugged me.”

  Walton was terrified. “Nobody was going to harm you, I swear. I wanted those photographs only to protect my wife, my family, from the embarrassment of my actions, my behavior. I have a sickness, Mr. Logan. It’s called sexual addiction. I’ve agreed to begin treatment for it. Please, can’t you understand?”

  “What about the Hollisters?”

  “Roy was a friend, a good friend. Toni too. I had absolutely nothing to do with their deaths. You have to believe me. I don’t know anything. If I did, I would tell you.” He began to sob. “I swear on the lives of my children. Please.”

  Crying didn’t make him any less of a misogynistic dirtbag in my view, but it did make him slightly more credible. I let him go. He wrote down his private number on a business card and encouraged me to call him anytime, 24/7, if I had any other questions. And while he didn’t come right out and say it, he offered an apology of sorts for doping my coffee and leaving me in the hands of the two Samoan guys.

  “My fears got the best of me,” Walton said. “I’m not proud of that. I shouldn’t have done what I did.” Then the blood drained from his face as a thought hit him. “By the way, you’re not wearing a wire, are you?”

  “You better hope like hell I’m not.”

  He wanted to know if I’d be willing to give him the photos.

  “As soon as you resign.”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Walton said.

  “Unless you want to see those pictures on the news,” I said, “don’t think too long.”

  WITHOUT A door key, I had to break in to my own apartment, removing a screen and prying up the bedroom window. Kiddiot found it all wonderfully exciting, tail twitching, his front paws curled under him, watching me as if I were a real burglar before diving under the bed while I climbed inside.

  He hadn’t touched his food. How he managed to remain unpleasantly plump, even with Mrs. Schmulowitz absent and unable to cook elaborate chicken recipes for him, was an enigma. I wasn’t nearly as picky when it came to eating. I got two tortillas and a slice of jack cheese out of my purple-colored refrigerator (which Mrs. Schmulowitz had picked up for cheap at some aging rock star’s home-remodeling sale), rolled the cheese between the tortillas—instant quesadilla— and ate it cold over my purple sink. Why dirty a dish or use the microwave when you don’t have to? The environment could thank me later.

  When I was finished with dinner, I drew a hot bath in my purple tub, squirted in a healthy shot of Mr. Bubble because I like the way it smells, then eased into the steamy, foaming water. It had been a frustrating day. I hoped that a long soak would help clear my mind of anything to do with Congressman Pierce Walton or anyone else who may or may not have been complicit in the slayings of Roy and Toni Hollister. Only soaking seemed to have the opposite effect. My brain wouldn’t turn off.

  Had Roy Hollister, hurting for money and with his safari business in decline, tried to blackmail Walton with incriminating pictures of a carnal nature? Had Walton retaliated by paying someone to permanently silence Hollister and Hollister’s wife? Roy Hollister had obviously been aware of Walton’s sexual addiction—they’d been together with prostitutes in Hollister’s plane—but, then, many people had to have been aware of Walton’s proclivities, including the call girls he used and abused. Walton would’ve had to kill a whole bunch of people, not only Roy Hollister, to keep his extracurricular activities under wraps.

  And what of my former father-in-law’s nephew, two-bit animal rights activist Dino Birch? There was little doubt that Birch had sent Hollister threatening anonymous letters and, yes, he’d received military sniper training with the same type of rifle used to gun down the Hollisters. But there was no way as far as I was concerned that Birch would have left his business card in the hills above the Hollister mansion where anybody with a fundamental understanding of ballistics and bullet trajectories would have eventually discovered it. That there was no record of him ever having purchased such a rifle in civilian life, and the fact that the Rancho Bonita police had yet to find the murder weapon, left me convinced that somebody had planted that business card up there in the hillside in what can only be described as an amateurish attempt to frame him—the same person who, in all probability, had shot up my apartment, trying to get me to back off.

  I wondered where Toni Hollister fit in amid all of it. She’d been eulogized as a gracious and giving philanthropist, the yin to her pompous, big game-hunting husband’s yang. Even if Toni in reality hadn’t quite been the saint her obituary made her out to be, had her affair with pilot Pete McManus somehow played a role in her demise and led to the death of her husband? My gut told me no. My head told me you never know. What I wanted was my wallet back. And my keys. And my gun. Moby Dick, otherwise known as Eugene Toleafoa, and his brother, Tiny, had them. Come morning, I intended to pay them a visit and ask for my things back. If they declined, I would tenderize them both like cheap cuts of meat.

  The laceration under my eye throbbed. It probably needed a couple of stitches, but at least it was no longer bleeding. There was something to be said for that, I guess. I scrubbed it until it stopped hurting, soaped up, washed off, and got out of the tub.

  My bed smelled of cat. I didn’t care. Sleep came that night like a welcomed friend. When I opened my eyes again, diffuse sunlight was canting in through the blinds. Outside, a crow was cawing. The red digits on my bedside clock showed 0610 hours.

  I dressed quickly, washed out the Classic Paté Chicken and Tuna Dinner festering untouched in Kiddiot’s bowl, replaced it with Classic Paté Sea Captain’s Choice fresh from the can, and tapped into my loose change jar before trotting out to my truck.

  MOBY DICK rubbed the sand from his eyes, still half-asleep. I appeared to be the last person he expected to find ringing his doorbell at 0625.

  “You got some balls, you know that, coming over here, man,” he said, yawning and filling the doorframe. “Whaddya want?”

  “We can discuss it inside, over breakfast.”

  “Breakfast? Man, it’s way too early for breakfast.”

  “Chocolate or coconut?”

  “Say what?” He was staring at the small white paper bag I was holding in my right hand.

  “Stopped off at a donut shop on my way over,” I said. “I could only afford two because you stole my wallet. So, chocolate or coconut?”

  “I’ll take chocolate.”

  “Oh, too bad. I’m going with the chocolate. Looks like you’re stuck with coconut.”

  “You’re freakin’ off-the-hook, man.” Moby Dick scratched his belly, which was hanging over the stretched-out waistband of his faded pajama bottoms.

  “I brought you a freshly baked confection. In some cultures, that’s equivalent to a marriage proposal. Now are you going to invite me inside, or are we going to have to stand out here and eat these bad boys, making the rest of the world jealous?”

  He thought for a second, then moved aside. I walked in.

  His brother, Tiny, who I’d hammered with the oxygen canister, was sacked out on the sofa. A nubby blanket with satin edging, baby blue, covered his massive heaving chest. A blood-soaked bandage partially covered the jaw I’d broken. He didn’t wake up. A good thing, considering I only brought two donuts.

  “You want some coffee?” Moby Dick asked as I followed him in
to the kitchen.

  “I’ll pass,” I said, remembering the spiked coffee my local congressman had served me.

  We sat down at the table. I split both donuts and gave him half. Neither of us said anything for a while, savoring each delectable bite. He was still waking up.

  “Let me ask you this,” I said. “How much did Congressman Walton pay you to work me over?”

  “Man, I ain’t telling you diddly,” Moby Dick said, licking chocolate from his sausage fingers, “on the grounds I might incinerate myself.”

  I smiled politely at his cheesy little play on words. He smiled, too, but refused to discuss anything to do with Walton or events from the previous day.

  “You’re lucky you weren’t arrested yesterday,” I said.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  We finished our donuts. He declared them “badass” and said he wished for more.

  “Give me back my stuff and we’ll go get some more.”

  “What stuff?”

  “You know what stuff.”

  “Afraid I don’t.”

  He was looking at me hard, his palms flat on the table, waiting for me to make a move. The man was scary, even in faded pajama bottoms. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little unnerved.

  In a purposely calm, self-assured voice, with a no-nonsense smile, I said, “Let me explain how this thing is going to go down, Eugene. You’re going to go get my revolver, my wallet, and my keys, and give them back to me, or you’re about five seconds away from the most humiliating ass-kicking of your life.”

  “Verbal judo” is what the experts call it—using the threat of violence to de-escalate a potentially violent confrontation or avoid one altogether. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I sure hoped it did in this situation. You never want to fight a man twice your size.

  Our eyes were locked. I balled my fists and silently prepared my battle strategy. He’d likely lunge across the table, or hurl the table aside and then lunge. I’d let him, letting his immense girth and momentum work against him as I backed clear of his hands, then counterattacked. His throat or his eyes. Soft targets. I’d go for those first.