Hot Start (18 page)

FOURTEEN

W
hy me, Buddha?

That thought rumbled through my brain as I showed up unannounced the next morning at Congressman Pierce Walton’s sparsely furnished field headquarters in downtown Rancho Bonita. Walton was not in and wasn’t due back for an hour or more, according to the studious, college-aged receptionist. He was helping break ground on nearby San Ramone Street for a new Veterans Administration counseling center. Was there someone else on staff who could help me?

“Sadly, no.” I thanked her and left my truck parked in a ninety-minute zone down the block from Walton’s office.

It was already warm, but I figured the short walk to the future site of the VA center, shaded by flowering pear and jacaranda trees, would do me good. I’d get in a bit of badly needed cardio and burn off some steam at having being forced by Buzz to play political hatchet man. He had persuaded me the previous night as he always had, by recounting how our bond had been forged in the sacred crucible of combat, and how he’d saved my sensitive parts more than once when the lead started flying. “You’ll do it out of the goodness of your patriotic heart,” he’d said over the phone, “and because if you don’t, I’ll have the Federal Aviation Administration yank your pilot’s license and you’ll never fly again.” I knew he was joking—sort of—but I also knew he never would have threatened me the way he had if he didn’t believe that my continued service was essential.

Even with the shade trees, I was sweating by the time I reached the vacant lot next door to the old, three-story veterans counseling center where the groundbreaking was taking place. I got there just as Walton and what I presumed was the region’s ranking VA administrator, both wearing yellow plastic hardhats, each dug a pristine, silver-plated shovel into a pile of loose dirt. They posed with the spades held high, then dumped out the soil in unison for the two local television news crews present, while a smattering of spectators applauded. Not to sound jaded, but the only other event in my opinion less newsworthy than public officials breaking ground with unused shovels and soft, callous-free hands are ceremonial ribbon cuttings with those goofy giant scissors. I waited in the shade under an awning while they congratulated each other.

“Hey, Logan, long time no see.”

Reporter Danika Quinn had spotted me. I ignored her.

“Oh, c’mon,” she said, tilting her head and pursing her lips, trying to look seductive, “don’t be that way. Look, I’m sorry if I pissed you off at the jail the other day, OK? I was just doing my job.”

“Secretly recording people and putting them on TV? That’s some job.”

“The public has a right to know.”

“The public also has a right to privacy, Danika, and the right to keep their mouths shut when they don’t feel like talking to hacks with network ambitions and recording devices hidden in their blouses.”

She ignored the insult. “So what did Dino Birch tell you anyway? You talked to him, right?”

“No comment.”

I turned to watch Congressman Walton troll the crowd for votes. He was happily shaking hands with anything that moved, two female aides following close behind him like loyal poodles. His sleeves were rolled up.

“There’s a rumor you found Dino’s business card up in the hills, where the shots came from,” Quinn said. “That true?”

I didn’t respond.

“There’s another rumor that Roy Hollister had some kind of crazy sex thing going on. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

I said nothing.

“Listen,” she said, “when you get to know me better, you’re really gonna like me. I’m a good person.”

“Modest too,” I said.

Quinn smiled, unfazed. Approaching Walton with a newshound like her sniffing around would’ve been about as subtle as renting a billboard. I’d have to find another, more discreet opportunity to talk with the congressman, and soon.

The sun had stolen the shade in which I’d found temporary refuge. Quinn was feeling it too. She wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her left hand. “Man,” she said, “it’s too hot out here.”

“You must be a trained observer, Captain Obvious.”

“You mind if I make a friendly suggestion?”

“It’s a free country.”

“I’m an investigative reporter,” she said. “Unless you want me going through all your dirty laundry and putting what I find out on air, you really should talk to me.”

I looked over at her. “You mind if I make a friendly suggestion?”

“Bring it.”

“You really should try a little soul searching sometime,” I said. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll find one.”

I left. She said nothing.

M
RS
. S
CHMULOWITZ
’
S
condition had been downgraded overnight from serious to critical. I asked two of the cardiac care nurses on duty what that meant. All they would tell me was that “complications” had developed overnight, and that cardiologists were working hard to stabilize “the patient.” They wouldn’t allow me to see her no matter how much I pleaded. My mood was already foul after my encounter that morning with Danika Quinn and my reluctance to play Brutus with my local congressman. The two stonewalling nurses definitely put me over the edge. I drove back to Walton’s field headquarters, parked in a fifteen-minute loading zone, and stormed in.

“I’m sorry,” the same intern said, “the congressman is in an important meeting. I’d be happy to take your name and number and have someone get back to you.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

I strode past her, toward the door to Walton’s inner office.

“Sir . . . Excuse me. Sir? You can’t go in there. Hey!”

Walton was on the phone, chuckling to someone about something, his tie loose, stationed behind his aircraft carrier of a desk.

“Mr. Walton, Cordell Logan. We met recently. You got a second?”

“I’ll have to call you back,” Walton said to whoever it was on the other end, and hung up.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the exasperated intern said from behind me. “I told him you were busy, but he just . . .”

“It’s OK, Amy.” Walton stood and offered me a smile and his hand. “Good to see you again, Mr. —?”

“Logan.”

We shook.

“Have a seat, please.”

I sat as Amy the intern quietly closed the door behind me. “So,” Walton said, “how can I help you?”

“I work for some individuals who answer to a certain chief executive officer who resides in our nation’s capital. I’ve been assigned to pass along a personal message from that CEO to you.”

Half smiling, Walton sat forward in his high-back leather chair and folded his hands placidly in front of him. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Your letter of resignation has been requested. Effective immediately.”

Walton’s half smile grew into a full one. “The Speaker put you up to this, didn’t he? I swear, that guy and his practical jokes. He really should be a stand-up comedian.”

“This is no joke, Congressman.”

His smile faded. “All right, who are you?”

Without asking, I reached across his desk for a pen and a slip of paper.

“Excuse me? What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Call this number,” I said, jotting down Buzz’s private line. “They’ll explain everything.”

I slid the slip back across the desk. He stared at it.

“And why exactly am I supposed to resign?”

“So you can do what politicians always do when they resign, spend more time with your family, and hopefully nip in the bud any public disclosures about your sexual escapades onboard the late Roy Hollister’s jet.”

He blanched. I could see the pulse in his neck.

“I remember who you are now,” Walton growled, his eyes narrowed. “You live in that garage, with a cat.”

“A lot of people would say it beats living in a van down by the river.”

He got up and stared out the window. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mr. Logan. I barely knew Roy Hollister. We may have met once or twice. I was as shocked as everyone else was when he and his lovely wife met such a tragic end.”

“Save it for Oprah, Congressman. I’ve seen a photograph of you and Roy having a good old time with some fine-looking talent. There’s concern in Washington that if the press gets wind of your adventures, the damage to your party, especially in an election year, will be substantial, not to mention the damage to your wife and children.”

Walton gazed at the palm trees baking outside. “The voters of this district elected me to office because they know I truly care about their welfare,” he said. “That’s why I entered politics to begin with. To help people.”

“Here’s a chance to help yourself, before it’s too late.”

I stood, tossed my card on his desk, and headed for the door. “Call me when you’ve got that letter written.”

“I’m not quitting.” Walton turned away from the window to face me. “You can tell those sons of bitches in Washington they don’t have any dirt on me that I don’t have on them.”

I reminded him of the photograph.

“A fraud,” he said. “Somebody pasted my head on another guy’s body. Happens all the time. There’s no end to what these criminals can do online.”

I told him about the Homeland Security passenger manifests and the ethics violations he’d committed by not reporting the trips he had taken on Hollister’s jet.

Walton smiled smugly. “Do you really believe the average voter cares about petty rule infractions like that? Rides I took on a constituent’s plane? I screwed up. Simple mistake. I forgot to report them, that’s all. I’ll pay some little fine. No harm, no foul.”

“You’ve got twenty-four hours to resign,” I said, “or all this goes to the Justice Department.”

Most people under pressure seek support and reassurance from people they know and trust. At Alpha, we routinely threatened little fish with promises of one-way, all-expenses-paid trips to Gitmo, then set them free and tracked their subsequent movements, knowing as often as not that they would lead us to more incriminating information and, if we were lucky, bigger fish to fry. My hunch was that Congressman Pierce would do precisely that, which is why I got in my truck, snatched the parking ticket off my windshield, drove around the corner, and established surveillance. I didn’t have to wait long.

Approximately ten minutes later, Walton walked out of his office in a big hurry with his sunglasses on and suit coat slung over his shoulder. He crossed East Contada Avenue, barely stopping to look both ways, jumped into a metallic turquoise Toyota Prius, and took off, headed west.

I followed him.

We wended our way through town, past the stately, Spanish-style county courthouse, its whitewashed walls festooned with magenta bougainvillea; past parks and mansions and the expansive rose gardens outside the city’s old Catholic mission, where monks in their coarse brown cassocks live and worship just as their predecessors did 200 years ago.

Through the narrow curves of Benedictine Canyon, Walton led me north toward Chumash Boulevard where he hooked a right, then a sharp left, before climbing into the hills on Mission Road. Careful to keep no less than a three-vehicle separation between us, I watched as he eventually turned right down a tree-lined driveway that led to a small, dilapidated ranch-style house with a gold Volkswagen Passat parked out front.

I drove on for another 200 meters before doubling back and parking alongside the road where I could maintain eyes-on the mouth of the driveway without looking obvious. Buzz called me while I waited. He wanted to know if I’d made contact with Walton, and whether I’d conveyed the White House’s demand that he resign.

“Yes, I made contact and, no, he’s not resigning.”

“Did he understand who you represent?”

“Affirmative.”

“And he said no?”

“He did.”

“Well, clearly, Logan, you weren’t persuasive enough.”

While Buzz vented about how much flak he was going to take because I hadn’t done my job, Walton’s car pulled out of the driveway and zoomed back in the direction of downtown, narrowly avoiding an oncoming UPS truck whose driver laid on his horn.

“Gotta go, Buzz. I’ll let you know as soon as I get anything else.”

“Wait, Logan, you can’t—”

I tapped the off button and tossed the phone on the passenger seat. I didn’t know what I hoped to find at the house to which Walton had driven so urgently. Sometimes a mission requires less thinking than it does simply doing. That was my mindset as I turned into the gravel driveway.

A redhead with shoulder-length tresses and babe-next-door appeal was pacing in front of the house, smoking and talking agitatedly on her phone. Late twenties. A sleeveless flower-print summer dress. Barefoot. Absorbed in conversation, she scarcely glanced over at me as I stepped from my truck.

“No, no, no,” she kept shouting into the phone in a decidedly Eastern European accent. “You’re not listening to me.”

I recognized the small anchor dangling from the gold chain around her neck, as well as her comely face. I’d seen both in the photograph Kang had shown me—the same woman who’d been having sex with Congressman Walton in the cabin of Roy Hollister’s jet.

“If I wanted to see you again, I would,” she said into the phone. “I don’t. It’s over. Do you understand? I’m hanging up now.”

Her face and jewelry weren’t the only things about her that were familiar. That gravelly smoker’s voice. I’d heard it the night she’d called to tell me that Roy Hollister’s death had nothing to do with his safari business.

“Mary?”

She sucked down the last of her cigarette and exhaled, sliding the phone into her tank top. I couldn’t decide if her eyes conveyed surprise or relief.

“I’ve been wondering,” she said, “when you’d find me.”

FIFTEEN

H
er living room decor, a crowded, mismatched jumble of eclectic yet comfortable, spoke of someone who frequented rummage sales. She brought in two tumblers of iced tea with sprigs of fresh mint, then settled onto a chintz-covered couch opposite the chair on which I sat.

“You don’t much look like a Mary.”

“My name is Nina,” she said, curling one bare leg under the other.

“What a coincidence,” I said. “I met a gentleman recently in Prague—Emil Sokol. He was in love with a prostitute who ran out on him. Her name was Nina too, only she was blonde.”