Flat Spin (7 page)

“This is Frank,” Carlisle said.

“Since when did you start needing a bodyguard, Gil?”

“World’s an increasingly dangerous place, hoss. A little precaution never hurt anybody.”

Frank started to pat me down. Carlisle told him it wasn’t necessary.

“This is my former son-in-law,” he said. “I trust him implicitly.”

My former father-in-law was a stocky man with thick lips. He was all but bald the last time I saw him. But where there was once shiny pate was now a forest of luxuriant curls the color of milk chocolate, with nary a trace of gray. Carlisle noticed me noticing.

“Four bucks a graft,” he said proudly. “Hell, I could’ve damn near bought another island in the Caribbean for what the new hair ended up setting me back. I didn’t want to get ’em, but the new honey, she insisted, bless her heart. That’s the risk you take, datin’ a showgirl young enough to be your grandbaby.”

“Another risk is dying of a massive coronary.”

Gil Carlisle laughed and bear-hugged me. “It’s just damn good to see you, son. Been way too long. Hope you came hungry.”

Frank the bodyguard took up his station at the entrance of the restaurant while Carlisle led me inside. The aromas were mouth-watering. Not a whiff of burning grease like most rural airport cafés, where the menus feature dishes like “Takeoff Tacos” and “The Barnstormer” burger. The restaurant at the El Molino airport caters to gourmands regardless of their interest in aviation. The kind of place that serves up lamb noisette in a blackberry reduction sauce and Peking duck breast seared rare at thirty bucks a plate. Small and intimate, with its tablecloths and pumpkin-colored walls, the restaurant looks like it belongs on Union Square in San Francisco or overlooking Rodeo Drive, not beside some windswept runway in the middle of farm fields.

“Truth be told,” Carlisle said over his shoulder as I followed him, “it’s good you showed up a little late. We were just wrapping up our meeting.” He led me to a large round table where three men were eating lunch. “Gentlemen, I want y’all to say howdy to Mr. Cordell Logan. Used to be hitched to my daughter.”

Carlisle introduced the man nearest me as Miles Zambelli, his executive assistant and chief financial advisor. Zambelli was in his early thirties. Mediterranean handsome, he wore fancy jeans and a black-striped, untucked dress shirt, tasseled loafers, rimless eyeglasses and a vague air of entitlement. He remained seated as introductions were made, eating and taking notes on a yellow legal pad, while shaking my outstretched hand with all the enthusiasm of a teenager forced to wash the dishes. His gold class ring bore the Harvard coat of arms, which explained a lot.

The others at the table stood respectfully to greet me as I approached. The taller of the two was decked out in beige golf pants and a pale yellow golf shirt, one of those fair-skinned, angularly athletic, mixed-race chaps who look good wearing anything. He was about thirty.

“Say hello to Lamont Royale,” Carlisle said. “Mr. Royale’s my right-hand man. Does my driving, helps me with my golf game and handles the cooking. Hell, if he didn’t have a damn dick, I’d marry the son of a bitch.”

“Call me Lamont, please,” Royale said, shaking my hand.

“Lamont it is.”

The other man Carlisle introduced as Pavel Tarasov, “oil broker extraordinaire.”

“Cordell Logan,” I said, “oil consumer.”

He parted his jaws, displaying a set of teeth so white against his tanned face that my eyes hurt just looking at them. I wasn’t sure if he was smiling or planning to bite me.

“I like this guy,” Tarasov said, gripping my hand firmly and a little too long, his accent faintly Russian. He had dark, intelligent eyes and black, well-barbered hair. His grooming, tailored business suit, and the $20,000 Rolex lashed to his left wrist advertised a man of assets and taste. Only his hands, meaty and speckled with scar tissue, seemed out of character with the rest of him. The kind of hands more familiar with physical labor than laboring behind a desk. Hands that had no business protruding from the starched sleeves of a white dress shirt with French cuffs and blue garnet cuff links.

An attentive waiter whose name-tag identified him as “Steve” slid a chair over for me from another table without being asked and waited for us to settle.

“Gentlemen,” Carlisle said, gesturing.

We sat.

Steve the waiter handed me a menu and asked if I’d like something to drink. The others were sharing a bottle of red wine. I myself was in a vodka martini mood. Chilled. With two fat Spanish olives. Then I remembered that I still had to fly myself home. Then I remembered that I don’t drink. I hadn’t touched a drop of liquor in seven years, ever since I’d quit working for the government.

“I’ll take an Arnie.”

“One Arnold Palmer, coming up,” Steve said, and left to go fetch my drink.

“Mr. Carlisle tells me you are crackerjack instructor pilot,” Tarasov said pleasantly.

“It keeps me off the streets.”

“When I was boy, I dreamed to fly fighter jets. The MiG, yes? But my marks in school, they were, how do you say, shit? My father, he makes with his hands the chairs, tables. Anything you want, he can make. He teaches me how to use the tools, cutting the wood. Rich people, they
love
my furniture. I sell to Princess Diana armoire. Chest of drawers to king of Saudi Arabia.”

“Not to brag, but I’m somewhat the fine furniture maker myself.”

“Truly?”

“Let’s just say they know me on a first-name basis at a certain Swedish furniture warehouse where, by the way, the meatballs and lingonberries are delicious.”

Lamonte Royale laughed. No one else got the joke.

“So,” I said to Tarasov, “what brings you to California?”

“Grapes,” Tarasov said, refilling his wine glass.

“Mr. Tarasov is thinking about acquiring a few vineyards,” Carlisle said. “He flew in to look over some properties. We decided El Molino would be mutually convenient for us to get together and hash out strategy on another little venture we’re considering partnering up on.” Carlisle leaned in close to me, his elbows on the table, his voice decidedly lower. “You ever hear of the Kashagan oil field?”

I hadn’t.

“In Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea,” he said. “Supposed to be the biggest find in fifty years.”

“A
hundred
years,” Zambelli said.

“The biggest find in history,” Tarasov said. “All we need are a few more investors, and the controlling share will be ours.”

Steve the waiter ferried my lemonade-iced tea to the table and set it down on a paper coaster. “Have you had a chance to decide?”

I pointed to what Zambelli was eating. “I’ll try some of that.”

“Pistachio-encrusted halibut,” Steve said. “Excellent choice.”

Carlisle waited until he moved off, then leaned in once more and said, “If that field comes in the way our geologists think it will, even the smallest fractional owner’ll be a billionaire. It’ll make Bill Gates look like a hobo.”

“I’m obviously in the wrong line of work,” I said, only half-kidding.

“Hell, that’s what I told my daughter when she married you,” Carlisle said, chuckling.

“What did you tell her when she married Echevarria?”

Carlisle’s smile melted. “I like you, Cordell. Always have. The day you and Savannah parted ways, I’ll tell you what, the two of us cried our eyes out like babies.”

I sipped my drink. If my former father-in-law was ill at ease revealing such personal intimacies in front of a potential business partner, he didn’t show it. Nor did they. It was Zambelli who seemed most uncomfortable with his boss’s candor.

“Mr. Carlisle,” he said, clearing his throat, “I suggest such matters might be better discussed between you and Mr. Logan in a more private setting.”

“I got nothing to hide from this man,” Carlisle said, gesturing to Tarasov. “If we’re gonna be in business together, he needs to know who I am and where I’m coming from. What you see is what you get. No more, no less.”

“Honesty in all endeavors,” Tarasov said.

Carlisle told him how the second husband of his daughter Savannah had died tragically in Los Angeles at the hands of a killer unknown. The case remained unsolved. He said he hoped to persuade Savannah’s first husband, namely me, to pass along any relevant information about Echevarria to the police, given that I had once worked for Echevarria in marketing. Carlisle said he was confident my help could make all the difference in the police solving the case.

“To truth and justice,” Tarasov said, hoisting his wine goblet.

“And the American way,” Lamont Royale added with a smile.

“Like Superman,” Tarasov said, impressed with himself that he actually got the joke.

They all clinked goblets.

“Truth, justice, and the American way,” I said, tepidly raising my glass.

I glanced over at Zambelli. His eyes never left his plate.

F
IVE

I
lifted off from El Molino that afternoon with a bellyful of halibut and $25,000 in my pocket, drawn on Gilbert Carlisle’s personal account at the Bank of Bimini. The money had come with one stipulation: Savannah was never to know that her father had paid me to talk to the police. I was to tell her only that I’d had a change of heart and decided to cooperate with the authorities because I realized it was the right thing to do. Or some such nonsense. Carlisle was so confident I would take his money that he’d had the cashier’s check drafted the day before we met, according to the bank time stamp on the stub.

If the LAPD knew that I’d been paid to enlighten them about what Echevarria once did for a living, they would likely dismiss my information as less than objective. Carlisle didn’t want that. Neither did I. Much as I hated to admit it, I was becoming increasingly curious about who might’ve murdered my former co-worker and romantic rival.

The list of suspects would’ve easily stretched around the block. War criminals. Cocaine kingpins. Serial killers. Traitors. Terrorists. The ones who got away. Survivors of the ones who didn’t. All would’ve had good reason to kill Echevarria, or any other former go-to guy. The problem was, they would’ve had to know his real name to find him. We always used aliases in the field for that very reason. My gut told me that Echevarria’s death had nothing to do with his having once worked for the government. But I wasn’t being paid to play Sam Spade. I was being paid to make my ex-wife and her father happy. For $25,000, considering the delicate state of my personal finances, I’d make sure both were ecstatic.

The headwinds I fought flying north to see Carlisle shifted south and turned to quartering headwinds by the time I flew home. Typical. I climbed to 7,500 feet, then 9,500, then 11,500. There was little difference in the quality of the ride, nor in my ground speed. The air was churned up like white water on a river. I struggled to keep the
Duck
level and on course. By the time I landed back in Rancho Bonita, my arms felt heavy. The fingers of my left hand ached where I had gripped the yoke. I decided that whoever it was at Cessna who ruled out wing-leveling autopilots as standard equipment on 172’s should come back in the next life as a fruit fly. Not a very Zen-like thought, I realized, but if the Buddha held a pilot’s certificate, I knew he’d feel the same way.

I tied down the airplane, got in my truck and hit the freeway, driving south toward Rancho Bonita. Twelve minutes later, I was sitting in the Bank of America parking lot downtown, staring at a $25,000 cashier’s check and wrestling anew with my conscience, wondering what I was doing even
thinking
about depositing Carlisle’s bribe money. My phone rang. It was Savannah.

“I wanted to apologize for my behavior yesterday,” she said. “Showing up unannounced. Some of the things I said. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”

“Heat of the moment.”

“Still no excuse.”

I was quiet.

“Well, anyway,” Savannah said, “I just wanted to say how sorry I was, barging into your life like that. I won’t ever bother you again.”

“Is that a promise or a threat?”

“It’s whatever you want it to be.”

I pondered the check in my hand, tapping it against the steering wheel.

“I always thought we had something, Logan,” Savannah said, “but after awhile, you were never around to appreciate it. You were always gone. You don’t water a flower, it dies. You stopped being there for me. Arlo was.”

“I stopped being there because Arlo sent me off on business assignments while he took care of business at home. You ever stop to think about that?”

She was quiet.

“Did you love him?”

“I suppose you could call it that.”

“Like you loved me?”

There was silence for what seemed like a long time. Then she said, “No. Not like I loved you.”

A sea green Buick Skylark pulled in beside me. An ancient old man wearing one of those white Navy “skipper” caps with gold scrambled eggs on the bill, the kind of hats sailboat owners put on when they want to look especially goofy, got out and hobbled around to open the door for his passenger, an old lady wearing an identical hat. She kissed his hand while he tenderly helped her out of the Buick. Who says there’s no such thing as eternal domestic bliss? I couldn’t help it; I sighed like a schoolgirl.

“You’ll be watching movies on Lifetime before long,” I mumbled to myself.

“Did you say something?”

“Yeah. I said I need my head examined.”

Any man with an ounce of self-respect would’ve ripped the check in half, hung up, and moved on with his life. But no man with an ounce of brains would’ve ever surrendered Savannah Carlisle as easily as I did. Maybe this was a way back to her. Even if it wasn’t, it was still twenty-five large.

“I need the number for the detectives handling the case,” I said.

“You’ll call them? Really?”

“You said you wanted me to talk to them. I’ll talk to them.”

“Oh, Logan, that’s fantastic!” The delight in Savannah’s voice was genuine. “What made you change your mind?”

I watched Methuselah and his bride hobble arm-in-arm into the bank. She was leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Just give me the number,” I said, “before I start heaving.”