by David Freed
He held up his own fist as if to show me its overpowering size, then covered his mouth, closed his eyes, and sneezed. It sounded like a missile launching.
“Stupid hay fever,” Moby Dick said, wiping his nose on the back of his right forearm.
He pushed back in his chair and sneezed again as walked to the cabinets above a double stainless-steel sink overflowing with filthy dishes. He opened the cabinet door and reached inside. When he turned back to face me, he was holding my .357.
“You’re not going to shoot me, are you? Because I’d hate for you to have nothing to read on death row.”
“That’s all they do on death row,” Moby Dick said.
“True, but it’s the quality of the reading material that would concern me. Good luck finding any Melville. All they have is Better Homes and Gardens with half the pages torn out so you don’t get any crazy-go-nuts ideas about turning macramé plant hangers into escape ladders.”
“No Melville?” He walked toward me with the gun at his side, the muzzle pointed toward the floor. “Now, that would be criminal.” Then, with a smile, he handed over the revolver, butt first. “Thanks for the donuts. No hard feelings, I hope.”
“Some,” I said, stroking the cut below my eye, “but I’ll get over them.”
MY KEYS were returned to me, as was my wallet. My one credit card was still tucked safely inside and so was my cash— all $23 of it. Moby Dick had proven himself definitely more trustworthy than the average muscle for hire. He was certainly better read.
I decided to check in on Larry, to see what progress he’d made in replacing the Ruptured Duck’s vulturized windscreen. Until that got fixed, I wouldn’t be doing any flying and no flying meant no income. I’m not saying that the Buddha, who frowned on the pursuit of money, was wrong, but I doubt he ever had to pay for parking tickets—or, as fate would have it, buy a long-overdue set of new truck tires.
Three miles from the airport, driving in the slow lane of the southbound 101 Freeway, the left rear retread on my Tacoma began shedding rubber like a stripper. With sparks flying and the tireless wheel rim scraping pavement, I put on my emergency blinkers and wrestled my crippled truck to the shoulder of the road. Cars and big rigs whizzed past. Nobody stopped to help. I called the Auto Club for a tow and dialed Buzz while I waited for the truck to arrive.
“Why didn’t you check in?” he demanded. “Where the hell have you been?”
“You don’t want to know, Buzz.”
“You’re right,” Buzz said. “I don’t want to know. I’ve got the White House riding my ass like a jockey at Wimbledon, Logan.”
“Wimbledon’s a tennis tournament, Buzz, not a horse race.”
“I don’t give a damn if it’s a chili cook-off! I’m assuming you didn’t meet your objective and get Walton to quit because if he had, it would be all over Fox and CNN, would it not?”
“He’s thinking about it.”
“Thinking about it? For Chrissake, how long does it take to think about doing the right thing?”
I would’ve brought him up to speed on other developments in the Hollister murder investigation, but I knew he didn’t much care. I was wondering if I did either.
That was before I went to Costco and everything changed.
TWENTY-SIX
The tow truck driver wore his mustache Fu-Manchu style. He spoke not a word as he hauled my pickup and me to the Costco tire department. I welcomed the silence. What with my sundry aches and injuries, compounded by the unexpected expense of now having to pay for new tires with funds I did not have, I was hardly inclined toward chatty repartee. We listened to country music on FM radio—some twangy cracker singing about how he preferred girls who liked beer. Dumb lyrics. Catchy tune. I hoped I didn’t get it stuck in my head.
The Costco service associate was less mechanic than he was a salesman in his khaki slacks and button-down dress shirt. He told me what I already knew, that I didn’t need one new tire, I needed four. He recommended top-of-the-line replacements that would’ve set me back more than a month’s rent. I opted for cheaper tires at a third the cost. The guy cocked an eyebrow as if I’d just informed him I that was going parachuting without a parachute.
“Just so you know,” he said, “these are basic tires. They’re made in China, OK? These are what the Chinese put on their cars. Not to scare you or anything. I’m just saying.”
“If they’re such dangerous tires, why are there so many Chinese running around?”
My truck, he said, would be ready in forty-five minutes.
Killing time, I wandered inside the warehouse, pondering patio furniture and mountain bikes I could never afford and didn’t want anyway, while loading up on free food samples served by sullen ethnic women in hair nets. The spinach dip and chicken Parmesan were especially tasty. I washed it all down with several tiny cups of fortified pomegranate juice, also free. Winning.
When I returned to the tire department forty-five minutes later, I found aircraft detailer Eric Ivory sitting in the waiting room, near the windows, hunched over a dog-eared Sports Illustrated.
“What’s going on, Eric?”
He looked up from the magazine, startled. “Hey, Logan, long time no see.”
“What’s it been—three days?”
“An eternity.”
We bumped fists. He asked me if I was getting tires. I said I was. He said he was too. I scanned the parking lot for his “Immaculate Wings” mobile cleaning van.
“I don’t see your ride out there,” I said. Something that big and orange is pretty hard to miss.
“Yeah, the tires aren’t for the van. Got myself a new ride. You should see this bad boy. Totally bitchin’. They’ve got it up on the lift. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
A man that excited about his new toy is not to be denied. I followed Ivory outside, around the corner. There were four service bays inside the tire department. My old Tacoma was up on the far right lift. All four wheels had been removed, but the new tires had not yet been installed. On the lift to the left of the truck was a gleaming, black 1982 Pontiac Firebird with chrome wheels.
“Best muscle car Detroit ever made,” Ivory said as we stood in the parking lot looking in. “Always wanted one. Beautiful, ain’t she?”
“That she is.”
A mechanic loosened the lugs on the Pontiac’s left rear wheel with an air impact wrench. He pulled it off the axle and laid it on its side before starting in on the right front wheel.
Ivory said he’d had his eye on the car for five years. It had changed hands twice in that time. He’d tried repeatedly to buy it but could never meet the owner’s price until recently.
“I paid way too much for it, but I’m doing OK right now money-wise, so I told myself, ‘What the hell.’ You only go round once in life, right?”
“Not according to the Buddha. You still thinking about taking some flying lessons?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good, because my calendar’s wide open.”
He said he’d call to schedule some flight time, and that he really wanted to continue our conversation, but that it was approaching lunchtime and there were free samples to be had inside Costco.
If anyone could appreciate free samples, I said, it was me. Once more, we bumped fists.
“See you soon, Logan.”
“Take care, Eric. Looking forward to hearing from you.”
I wondered what was taking so long with my truck. Like I said, I wanted to get out to the airport and check in on the Duck. I walked into the service bay to find out how much longer I’d have to wait when I happened to glance down at the rear wheel from Ivory’s Pontiac, lying there on the cement floor. Something odd about it caught my attention.
The tire was heavily worn, especially on the outside shoulder where the tread appeared to deviate abruptly from the rest of the zigzag tread pattern, as if the car had gone over something sharp. I stooped to look closer and pushed the tip of my index finger into the rubber groove. I could feel something hard
inside the tread, something that didn’t belong.
“Sir, you’re not allowed in here.” The mechanic was squatty, in his early twenties.
“Hand me a screwdriver. Flat blade. Something small.”
He stood over me with his hands on his hips.
“Sir, you’re really not—”
“I heard you. Now hand me a screwdriver,” I said.
People tend not to challenge authority. If you act like you’re in command, most assume you must be. The mechanic was no exception. He got me a screwdriver without asking why.
I dug the blade into the rubber. What I pried out would refocus my interest in the Hollister murders and, if my instincts proved true, help set a wrongly imprisoned man free. Unfortunately, amid my excitement, my situational awareness lapsed.
I didn’t realize I was being watched.
DON’T ASK me what I ate for lunch yesterday. I couldn’t tell you. I honestly can’t remember. But in examining Eric Ivory’s tire, a light went off inside my skull like the bomb we wished we’d dropped on Hitler, and I flashed on Danika Quinn’s news report from a week earlier. Part of Quinn’s story featured yours truly. The part I remembered with greater clarity, however, was her on-camera interview with money manager Jackson Giamatti, Roy and Toni Hollister’s neighbor.
Giamatti claimed that on the night of the murders, he’d seen a black Chevy Camaro with chrome mag wheels, like the car owned by prime suspect Dino Birch, cruise slowly past the Hollisters’ mansion. Any gearhead of a certain age can tell you that early models of the Camaro and Firebird, both General Motors products, had virtually identical body styling. It would have been easy, especially in darkness, to mistake Birch’s black Camaro for Eric Ivory’s black Firebird. I wondered if Giamatti, perhaps too young to know such things, could have made the error.
That wasn’t all I wondered.
The scarred tread pattern of the tire removed from Ivory’s Firebird essentially matched the odd-shaped rubber track mark I’d found that night outside my apartment, after gunshots had sent me diving for cover. What I’d found embedded in the tire was a galvanized, one-inch roofing nail identical to those I’d seen in the alley that night.
Had Eric Ivory shot up my residence? Had it been his car, not Dino Birch’s, seen cruising past Toni and Roy Hollister’s estate that night? More significantly, what would have compelled Ivory to commit such violence? I didn’t know the man or his background well enough to offer even an educated guess, but it was time I did.
When a terrorist’s name goes up on a targeting board, among the first steps taken is to identify his passions. Is he loyal to his significant other? Does he have a sweet tooth? Is he a sports fan? The more you can learn about what turns him on, the easier it is to find and stop him. The same lesson can be applied to the civilian world—to know what interests an individual is to know the individual. With Eric Ivory, his beloved new used Firebird seemed as easy a place to start as any. He’d said he only recently acquired the car. How recently was the question. Did he own it when the Hollisters were shot? I walked out of the service bay and dialed Buzz from the parking lot.
“I need you to run a criminal background check on a guy for me, and the sales history on his car.”
“Who’s the guy?” Buzz asked.
“His name is Eric Ivory.”
“What’s he got to do with Walton?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I’m not sure.”
He was grumpier than usual, which was saying something. Part of it had to do with the pressure he was under from the president’s staff on the Walton matter. But another part, he volunteered, had to do with his wife. She wanted them to book a Disney cruise for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary when all he wanted to do was stay home with a case of cold ones, listening to his favorite operas on CD.
“I’ll run the background check and the tag, Logan,” he said, “but the next call I get from you better be you telling me Walton’s packed it in.”
I read him the license plate number on the Firebird.
BUT FOR a couple of minor traffic citations, Eric Ivory’s record was clean. California Department of Motor Vehicle records indicated that he’d purchased the Firebird less than a week before the Hollisters went to meet their makers. Ivory had paid $17,300 for it. The seller was one Carmelo Pelusi, sixty-two, who resided in the quaint but unpretentious beach town of Windward Cove, eleven miles south of Rancho Bonita. Pelusi, records show, had owned the car for about three months before selling it to Ivory. That was as far back as DMV files on the car went, Buzz said. All previous transfers of title had been archived.
I drove to Windward Cove.
Pelusi’s home was an aluminum Airstream trailer in a mobile-home park two blocks from the water. A faded green Mercury Cougar, circa 1979, was parked in front.
“Whatever it is you’re selling, we don’t want any.” An older bottle-blonde who looked like the “before” facelift picture in a cosmetic surgeon’s office squinted out at me from behind a screened window. She had bloodshot eyes and was nursing a red plastic party cup of what looked like white wine.
“I’m looking for Carmelo Pelusi.”
“What for?”
“He sold my friend a car. Cool ride. I just wanted to ask him a couple of questions about it.”
“Which car?”
“ ’Eighty-two Firebird.”
“That hunk of junk?” She topped off her cup from a bottle of Two Buck Chuck. “He was always working on that darned thing. Something always needed fixing, I’ll tell you that. You could never get it to start. Couldn’t ever find no parts for it either. Best thing that ever happened, him getting rid of it.”
“Is Carmelo around?”
“Fishing.” She nodded toward the beach. “If you see him, tell him we’re out of toilet paper.”
Pelusi wasn’t hard to find. He was plopped on the sand a few feet from the surf, line in the water, the butt of his fishing pole propped between his legs. Tank top. Tribal tats. Canvas shorts. White, sun-bleached hair, long and unkempt. A leathery surfer, long past his prime. He was nipping from a bottle of wine cloaked in a paper bag.
“Catching anything?”
“Some peace and quiet from the old lady. Other than that, not a damn thing.”
I returned his smile, shook his hand, and said I was interested in buying a muscle car similar to the Pontiac he’d sold to Eric Ivory. I was lying, granted, but it was a conversation starter, and that’s what I needed.
Pelusi went on for five semi-inebriated minutes about the virtues of two-barrel carburetion and forged crankshafts before the tip of his pole suddenly curled toward the ocean and his line went taut.
“Hey, hey, will ya lookie there?” Laughing excitedly, he scrambled to his feet and reeled in a ten-inch perch with a spiny dorsal fin.
Happy distraction can be an effective interrogation method— which the fish was, whether Pelusi realized it or not.
“How do you know Eric Ivory?” I asked as Pelusi carefully unhooked the perch.
“I don’t.”
“You sold him your Firebird.”
“Doesn’t mean I adopted him. I put an ad on Craigslist. He showed up the next day and paid me cash. Didn’t try to grind me or nothing. Listen, I sell a ton of cars online. Big demand for the classic Detroit stuff. You can make some good coin if you know what you’re doing.”
“That didn’t seem unusual to you, him not trying to get you to lower the price?”
“A little, maybe, but he wanted the car bad and he wasn’t hurting for money, I can tell you that. Crisp, new hundred-dollar bills. Kept ’em in a toolbox. ’Scuse me.”
I watched him wade into the surf line and gently return the perch to the water before trudging back up the beach and grabbing his wine bottle off the sand.
“That’s the fifth time I’ve caught that same fishy this week,” Pelusi said, offering me some wine.
“No, thanks.”
He took a long swig. “I got a sweet Mercury for sale i
f you’re interested. Cougar. Seventy-nine. Rebuilt engine. Power everything. Make you a helluva deal.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Yeah, well, don’t think about it too long, cuz I got it priced to move.”
“How much?” I asked, hoping to build a little rapport and keep him from asking me questions before I got the information I wanted.
“Seven nine hundred,” he said. “But I’m willing to take seventy-five.”
“Tempting.”
He cast his line out once more, the sea breeze blowing his snowy curls.
“You know, one thing I don’t get,” I said. “Eric told me he tried to buy the Firebird from the owner before you, only the previous owner wasn’t interested, even with all that money. I’m wondering why that guy sold the car to you and not Eric?”
“Because I happen to be friends with the previous owner, that’s why. We’re in the same car club—used to be anyway.” Pelusi reeled in the slack on his line. “Kid goes overseas to Afghanistan with the army, comes home, tries to do a little bit of good in this miserable world, saving the animals and so forth, and now they got him locked up on some bogus murder beef. A veteran who honorably served his country. If that don’t beat all, you know?”
“A real shame.” My breath came fast and, for a moment, my heart seemed out of rhythm. “Your buddy locked up on that bogus murder beef, his name by any chance wouldn’t be Dino Birch, would it?”
Pelusi looked over at me. “You know Dino?”
“Yeah.”
More significantly, I now realized, Eric Ivory knew Dino Birch. Their connection was a game changer. It affirmed in my mind that it was Ivory’s Firebird, not Birch’s Camaro, seen outside the Hollisters’ mansion that night. If Dino Birch had been the victim of a frame job as he claimed, it seemed increasingly likely that it was Ivory who’d done the framing. It also bolstered my belief that it had been Ivory who’d popped off those shots at my apartment, hoping to scare me off whatever investigative trail he feared I was on.
I thanked Pelusi for taking the time and wished him good fishing.
