Flat Spin (16 page)

“If Arlo had anything to say, I’m sure he would’ve called me.”

“You don’t call with sensitive information,” I said. “You deliver it in person.”

“Sounds to me like you’ve been watching too many spy movies, Mr. Logan,” Zambelli said.

“Who has time for movies? I’m too busy watching
Dancing with the Stars
.”

Carlisle turned somberly from the window. “I know that you and Arlo worked for the government in some kind of sensitive job, tracking people, whatever it was the two of you did. We had some beers once. He started telling me things he probably shouldn’t have. I hushed him up before he got too far. Never told Savannah a word of it. The point is, I hired him because he was married to my daughter and needed the work. But I can tell you one thing, beyond question: the job he did for me had nothing to do with who killed him or why.”

“Are you aware that Pavel Tarasov has been linked to Russian intelligence?”

Carlisle rubbed his eyes and ran his hand across his mouth. “Look, I have every confidence that had Arlo found out anything significant, anything at all, he would’ve let me know. Pavel Tarasov’s a good man. I’ve seen his heart. I’ll consider myself fortunate indeed to be in business with him.”

“If he’s such a good man,” I said, “why did you have Echevarria investigate him?”

“Like I said. Better safe than sorry.” Carlisle crossed to the bar and poured himself a scotch.

“Why didn’t you tell me your daughter and your assistant, Mr. Zambelli, slept together?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business!” Zambelli said. He took an angry step toward me with clenched fists, then thought better of it.

“Maybe not my business,” I said, “but it
is
the LAPD’s business.”

“How the hell’s it their business?” Carlisle said.

“Wife has fling, husband leaves, husband turns up dead. I’m no homicide investigator, but I do believe that when they get to the ‘who done it’ list, the whole jealous lover scenario is usually right up there, no?”

“If you’re insinuating that I was somehow jealous of Mr. Echevarria, or that I had anything to do in any way with his death,” Zambelli said, “you’re sadly mistaken.”

Carlisle surveyed me coldly. “You have no right to come into my house, making bullshit insinuations like that.”

“You’re right, Gil. I probably should’ve made them at the police station.”

Carlisle’s eyes were flat hard stones. Gone was the velvet twang from his voice. “Did you tell the police what happened between Savannah and Mr. Zambelli?”

“You asked me to tell them what I knew about Echevarria. That’s what I did. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Very good,” he said, heading for the door. “I suggest you keep it that way.”

“Why don’t you want the police to know about Savannah’s affair, Gil?”

“Mr. Royale will see you back to your airplane,” Carlisle said.

He disappeared down a long hallway. The forcefulness of his stride conveyed barely bridled anger. Zambelli shot me a contemptuous look and followed after him, nearly colliding with Lamont, who swerved like a running back and somehow managed to hang on to the highball glass of mango juice he’d prepared without spilling a drop. A pink hibiscus floated on top.

“The hibiscus is edible,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard a word of my exchange with Carlisle and Zambelli.

“Bonus,” I said.

L
amont Royale chauffeured me back to the North Las Vegas airport in Carlisle’s four-seat Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead convertible. The car had teakwood paneling and the initials “GC” stitched into its leather headrests. I rode shotgun.

“Don’t be too upset with him,” Lamont said. “Mr. Carlisle’s a fine man.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Royale told me how he was originally from Florida. He’d had a few minor scrapes with the law growing up, he said, and was grateful to Carlisle for having taken a chance on him. He told me how much he missed his girlfriend, a dental hygienist named Laura who lived with her widowed father in Los Angeles. They saw each other on weekends, taking turns driving across the desert.

“They’re real tight, Laura and her dad; she doesn’t want to be too far away from him,” Lamont said, glancing over his shoulder as he changed lanes. “I’d move to LA, but then I’d have to quit working for Mr. Carlisle. I just can’t see doing that. Best job I ever had.”

“Stuck between the rock and hard place.”

“Exactly.”

He asked me how long Savannah and I had been married.

Long enough to know better, I said.

We stopped at a red light. A van pulled up in the next lane over, hauling a rolling billboard—a toll-free number and the words, “Fresh Hot Girls Delivered To Your Door In 20 Minutes or Less!!!” superimposed over the picture of a huge naked breast.

“I feel terrible for Savannah. She’s such a class act,” Royale said. “I hope they catch whoever killed Mr. Echevarria. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but I’m sure he was a real good guy.”

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” I said, distracted by the giant breast.

“You don’t really think Miles Zambelli had anything to do with it, do you?” Royale said.

“I think that low-wing airplanes are easier to taxi in a crosswind than high-wing planes. I think that the national championship in college football should be decided in single-elimination tournament play, like basketball. I also happen to think my landlady makes the best brisket this side of the Wailing Wall. Beyond that, I don’t know what I really think anymore.”

“I just don’t think Miles is capable of murder,” Royale said.

“You push somebody hard enough,” I said, “they’re capable of anything.”

T
raffic on Interstate 15 was stop-and-go from Baker south to Victorville as a legion of Southern Californians, their weekend debaucheries in Sin City come to an end, inched their way down Cajon Pass and into the eastern fringes of the Los Angeles Basin. Driving would’ve taken seven hours given all the congestion. I made it back to Rancho Bonita via air in a little more than two.

Leonardo da Vinci is purported to have said that once a person has tasted flight, “You will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.” Old Leo nailed it—at least on days when the vagaries of Mother Nature aren’t factored into the mix, as was the case that afternoon. The weather had improved radically in time for my flight back to Rancho Bonita. No clouds. No turbulence. So silky was the air that it felt like the
Duck
was fixed in time and place, dangling there on some invisible thread while the earth glided silently by beneath us. I tried to think profound thoughts. Like how privileged I was to be unshackled from the wingless masses two miles below me, and how grateful I should’ve felt simply to be alive on such a glorious day. But all I could think about was how that little weenie, Miles Zambelli, had slept with my ex-wife. Which didn’t even begin to compare with the venom I harbored for Echevarria. Even now, after all the years, I despised him for having stolen Savannah. I hated myself even more for my inability to let go of it. We’d been brothers-in-arms. Spilled blood together. Gotten stinking blind-eyed drunk together. The Buddha believed that to understand everything was to forgive everything. I had a long way to go, I realized, before I could forgive Arlo Echevarria for
anything
, let alone everything. But I told myself that I would try harder. To find who killed him would be a big first step. Given our shared history, I suppose I owed him that much.

“Cessna Four Charlie Lima, Joshua Approach, turn right thirty degrees for traffic, Boeing 737, four miles southbound, descending out of 11,000 feet into Burbank. Caution wake turbulence.”

“Four Charlie Lima is coming right thirty degrees, looking for traffic.”

The jetliner was approaching from above and to my right. I tipped my starboard wing, nudged the right rudder pedal and eased into a standard rate turn. My new course would take me well behind the jet. The trick would be to avoid flying through the vortexes of violent air corkscrewing down and away from his wingtips—invisible mini-tornadoes that could easily flip the
Duck
like a flapjack and definitely ruin my day. I turned another twenty degrees and widened the angle between us until our opposing paths were roughly parallel. By the time I turned back on my original heading, we’d be far behind him.

The 737 passed off my left wingtip at a distance of less than two miles. I could see an Eskimo’s face painted on the vertical stabilizer. Alaska Airlines. I wondered how many Eskimos were on board. My guess was zero.

I
checked the answering machine in my office at the airport after landing. There were no messages. Not that I expected any. OK, that’s a lie. I had hoped that maybe Savannah would’ve called to offer a truce. But I suppose she could have just as easily called me on my cell phone. She hadn’t done that, either.

Kiddiot was asleep in the oak tree when I got home. I told him that I’d missed him and encouraged him to come down and share some quality time. He raised his head, yawned, and went back to sleep. My punishment for having abandoned him.

“He wouldn’t touch his food,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, dragging a trash bag out her back door. “I’m telling you, that is one persnickety cat.”

I took the bag from her despite her insistence that she was perfectly capable of taking out her own garbage and deposited it in a can out in the alley.

“By the way, somebody else came by looking for you,” she said when I walked back into the yard through the gate. “Not the hunky bill collector, either.”

“Who was it?”

“I didn’t ask. But I’ll tell you one thing: whoever he was, he was no fan of yours. Some piece of work, this
schmuck
. He wanted to know where you were. Tells me he’s your friend. So I say to him, ‘If you’re his friend, you must know where he is. You don’t gotta ask me.’ Then he gives me this look, like Paul Muni in
Scarface
, you know, the original, before the remake, the one with—what the blazes is his name?”

“Al Pacino?”

“Al Pacino—always screaming! Every movie like a human steam whistle, this man. OK, Mr. Top of Your Lungs, we know your vocal cords work. What else did you get for Hanukkah? Paul Muni never had to raise his voice. Not once. Now,
there
was an actor. And I’ll let you in on a little secret: his name wasn’t Muni. It was Meier—Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund. And I don’t have to tell you what kind of name
that
is. That’s right. Paul Muni was Hebrew! Lauren Bacall, too,
and
Kirk Douglas.
And
William Shatner! Not to mention Mr. Spock.”

“Not to change the subject, Mrs. Schmulowitz, but could we please go back to the
schmuck
who came to see me?”

“The
schmuck
. Right. So anyway, again he asks me, ‘Where is he?’ Meaning you. So I tell him, ‘Listen, buster brown, if you don’t get off my porch in the next five seconds, I’m calling the cops.’ He gives me that look again, like I’m supposed to be afraid, then turns around and leaves. A real
shtik fleish mit tzvei eigen
, that one.”

The man she described was dusky, five-foot-ten, maybe taller, 180 pounds or so.