Fangs Out (9 page)

“If you think I’m gonna access classified government files and go to Leavenworth, Logan, just so you can go chasing some strange piece of tail, you’re dreamin’,” Buzz said. “Why don’t you do what every other creepy stalker does these days—look her up on the Internet.”

“First of all, I’m not chasing some ‘strange.’ I’m working. Second of all, I’m out of town and I don’t have my laptop. I’m not asking you to compromise national security, Buzz. I’m asking you to check open source records and find me an address, that’s all.”

“You don’t have a cell phone?”

“It doesn’t have Internet service.”

“Everybody has the Internet on their phone these days, Logan. What century are you living in?”

“The one that requires me to make a choice between eating or paying for cell phone service features I can’t afford. Are you gonna help me or not?”

Buzz grunted. He was among my oldest friends, a salty, hard-charging Delta vet who had shown me the ropes when I’d first transferred into Alpha. Buzz had done more to help populate the streets of Paradise with demented martyrs than just about any operator alive or dead. He’d lost an eye to an RPG, gunning down the Libyan boy who’d launched it at him. The injuries, both emotional and physical, compelled him to trade field operations for an all-source analyst’s post. But neither his wounds nor his desk job dulled the kiss-my-hind end attitude that made him who he was.

“The Three Tenors,” Buzz said.

“The Three Tenors?”

“They’re opera stars, Logan, you uncultured lout.”

“I know who they are. What about ’em?”

“Buy me their concert CD, and I’ll run the address for you.”

“Since when did you become an opera fan?”

“Since my old lady decided it was high time I stopped walking around on my knuckles. Face it, Logan, you could stand to do a little less swinging from the trees yourself.”

“Next thing, you’ll be telling me you’re into ballet, too.”

“Ballet? Me? Christ, no. Ballet’s for pussies.”

“Your denial’s just a tad over the top, Buzz. But that’s cool. There’s no shame in liking ballet.”

“OK, so I like ballet—but you tell anybody, Logan, I swear to God, the fire department’ll have to use the Jaws of Life to remove my foot from your anus.”

“Chill, buddy, your secret’s safe with me. Three Tenors in concert for Janet Bollinger’s home address. Fair trade.”

“I probably would’ve run the address for free, you know, you son of a bitch.”

“You’re nothing if not a true humanitarian, Buzz.”

He made a sarcastic smooching sound and hung up.

R
UTH
W
ALKER’S
former co-worker, Janet Bollinger, lived just north of the Mexican border in Imperial Beach, among San Diego’s decidedly lesser suburbs. I drove my black rented SUV south down the Golden State freeway from downtown San Diego, got off eighteen minutes later on Palm Avenue and headed west, passing junk shops, tattoo parlors, and various meth heads and other zombies wandering the sidewalks with dazed, whacked-out faces.

Buzz had gotten back to me with Janet Bollinger’s address ten minutes after I called him. Though he didn’t reveal his sources, it was evident he’d tapped state DMV records—a big no-no in the federal intelligence community if such inquiries are made for other than official purposes, which in truth they are all the time. More than a few analysts and case officers have stepped on their meat running license plates after spotting some sweet young thing in the grocery store parking lot. Buzz, I was confident, had been around too long and was too savvy not to have covered his computer tracks. Along with Bollinger’s address, he passed along her recent driving record. She’d racked up one moving violation in the previous six months and been involved in a two-car, non-injury fender-bender in suburban El Cajon. The other car, Buzz mentioned offhand, was registered to one Hubert Bedford Walker of La Jolla.

“You’re kidding me.”

“About what?” Buzz said.

“Hubert Walker.”

“Who’s Hubert Walker?”

“Big war hero.”

“So am I, Logan, but I don’t hear you launching fireworks every time my name is mentioned.”

“That fender-bender with Walker, you got any further details? Any idea when it happened?”

“Two-seven May of this year. That’s all it shows.”

May 27. The day before Dorian Munz was executed.

“Anything else I can do for you today, Logan? Take a bullet for your sorry ass? Lose my pension?”

“Thanks, buddy. The Three Tenors are in the mail.”

“Yeah, right. And if you believe that . . .”

Buzz grunted and signed off.

J
ANET
B
OLLINGER
resided in a tired, two-story four-plex at Calla Avenue and Florida Street. The place was less than a mile from the beach, but about a million miles from anything about which the Beach Boys ever waxed poetic. Steel security grates covered the doors and windows. Black asphalt covered the grounds. Plenty of off-street parking and not a single flower in sight. A home on the downside of life’s bell curve. I checked the bank of tarnished brass mailbox slots bolted to the front wall. The mailbox marked “B” had a slip of paper Scotch-taped to it. Printed in a woman’s careful hand it said, “J. Bollinger.”

Apartment B was on the first floor, on the east side of the building. I rapped on the door. There was no answer.

On the second floor landing directly above Bollinger’s apartment, a chubby, brown-skinned dude in his mid-twenties leaned with his forearms on the wrought-iron railing. He was shirtless and in boxer shorts, smoking a doobie. His underwear was blue and was adorned with little yellow San Diego Charger lightning bolts. A likeness of the Virgin, her hands outstretched, was inked across his flabby gut and man boobs. A tat that said “Esmeralda” in cursive script took up much of the left side of his neck. He eyed me with unbridled disdain.

“How do you think the Chargers’ll do this season?” I asked with my most disarming smile.

He shifted his gaze dismissively, sucking in some weed, and stared out at the ocean.

“I’m looking for the lady who lives downstairs.”

“Wouldn’t know nothin’ about it.”

“You haven’t seen her around today, have you?”

Silence.

“I’m not a cop, homeboy.”

“Like I said, wouldn’t know nothin’ about it.”

“Well, what
do
you know?”

He turned his head and spit, like it was meant for me, then looked back out at the ocean.

“Guess what? I know something.”

He looked back down at me. “Yeah? Whadda you know?”

“I know that the Buddha never claimed to be a god, which has to make you wonder: is Buddhism a philosophy or a religion, because every other major religion entails some essential form of theism, right? But not Buddhism, which many scholars consider non-theistic or even atheistic. Your thoughts?”

“Mierde.”

“What’s your name, homeboy?”

He glared down at me.
“Pinche marica come mierda.
”

Making friends wherever I go.

I climbed into the Escalade and went to find some coffee. I’d wait for Janet Bollinger to come home.

T
HERE WAS
a McDonald’s on Palm Avenue a few blocks away. I ordered a small cup and took my time swilling it. It tasted like something that could’ve leaked out of the Exxon
Valdez.
I didn’t care. Coffee’s coffee. Anything else brewed from a bean is overpriced pretense.

I called Mrs. Schmulowitz to check on Kiddiot. He remained a no-show.

“He’s probably got a girlfriend out there somewhere,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “Don’t think I don’t know how
all
you tom-cats are, bubby. That kitty of yours, he reminds me of Irving, my third husband. Could be he’s Irving’s reanimation.”

“I think you mean ‘reincarnation,’ Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

“Carnation, animation, whatever. I’m telling you, to look at him, you would’ve sworn Irving had brain damage—‘The
Schmo,’
my father called him. But lock the bedroom door and,
oy
, the man was a Hebrew Mount Vesuvius. The bimbos went after him like flies at a picnic. They never bothered me much, though. He’d get tired of the floozies after a couple days and come slinking back to me, just like your kitty’s gonna do.”

Mrs. Schmulowitz said she’d gone to the market and was already cooking the brisket she was confident would lure Kiddiot home. She promised to call as soon as he turned up.

“Gotta run, Bubeleh. I’m off to the doctor. We’re discussing post-op procedures. When this is all done, I’ll have the tummy of a thirteen-year-old Nubian princess. Who knows? Maybe I’ll finally get bat mitzvahed.”

“Give ’em hell, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

Two fork-tailed fighter jets streaked overhead, F/A-18 Hornets climbing in trail out of the Navy’s air station at North Island. Somebody once said that piloting a combat aircraft at high speed is like having sex in the middle of a car crash—dangerous, a total rush, and when it’s over, it’s over fast. They forgot to mention that once you’ve flown combat aircraft, nothing else compares. The Hornets banked north in a sweeping right turn and headed out to sea. I was watching them wistfully when my phone rang.

“Just checking to make sure you made it to San Diego OK.”

“If I hadn’t made it, Savannah, your call would have gone to voice mail, would it not?”

“You don’t have voice mail, Logan.”

She was correct. One more thing I couldn’t figure out on my phone.

“You made it down in one piece, though?”

“I wasn’t involved in any midair collisions, if that’s what you mean.”

“Why are you being so obnoxious to me?”

“Why do you think?”

“Logan, Arlo’s gone—and my relationship with him began dying long before he did. I feel like I’m ready to move on with my life. I’m hoping you are, too.”

“His dying didn’t wipe the slate clean, Savannah. Walking out of a marriage isn’t some computer game. You don’t reboot and start over.”

“I understand that.”

“No, Savannah. I don’t think you do.”

I’m not sure I understood, either. If a man is lucky, he meets that one woman in his life and is forever transformed. She becomes all he thinks about, even when she’s no longer his. It’s like a favorite song you love and come to hate because you can’t get it out of your head. I wanted Savannah out of my head. And, at the same time, that was the last thing I wanted.

“In any case,” she said, “I have a surprise.”

“I hate surprises.”

“I’m aware of that, Logan. But maybe you’ll like this one.”

“Fire away.”

“I’d like to come down to San Diego, to stay with you for awhile, see how it goes.”

“I thought you wanted to go to neutral corners.”

“I did. I thought about it, and now I’d like to try again. We don’t have to go to SeaWorld if you don’t want to. I admit, I was being . . .”

“Petulant?”

Her tone took a sharp turn. “If you don’t want me to come down, Logan, just say so.”

I took awhile to answer, my heart thumping in my ears, a thousand disparate thoughts swirling inside my head. But even as I ruminated, I knew what I planned to say.

“I want you to come down.”

“You sure?”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t.”