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“He beat me. I want him in jail.”

“What evidence do you have?”

“. . . Evidence?” She looked past me, chewing a fingernail.

“There’s a reason why sitting congressmen aren’t arrested every day, Simona. You need proof of wrongdoing. Witnesses. Sworn statements.”

“But he beat me. Many times.”

“I understand that, but you need witnesses. Do you have any?”

She slumped in her seat, her chin on her chest, defeated.

“Look,” I said, “I don’t doubt Walton did what you say he did. But what I think doesn’t matter. It’s what the police think. It’s what the prosecutors think. And no prosecutors are going to touch the case unless you deliver it to them tied up with a pretty bow on it. Walton is a ranking member of Congress. You’re a . . .”

My words cut her. I could see that.

“I’m just trying to be realistic here,” I said.

“Nina said you would help me.”

“I’m trying to. Take the gun, Simona. You can give it back to me later. Chances are you won’t need it, but I’ll feel a lot better knowing you can defend yourself if you have to.”

“Get out of my car.”

“Simona . . .”

“I said get out!” She cranked the Jeep’s ignition and refused to look at me.

“You take care of yourself.”

I got out and watched her rocket from the parking lot, onto Ventura Boulevard, heading west. I’m not saying it was among my more brilliant moves, offering to arm a distraught prostitute, but it was the best one I could come up with at the moment. How much of an actual threat, if any, Pierce Walton posed was anyone’s guess.

W
HEN
I was in the military, lack of sleep came with the job. Whether it was planting a 500-pound bomb while dodging antiaircraft fire or clearing a houseful of insurgents, I could stay up thirty-six hours and still always be counted on to hit the target. Those days were long gone. I desperately needed some sack time before driving back to Rancho Bonita.

I dozed in my truck in the parking lot of the Sportsmen’s Lodge. Nobody disturbed me. An hour or so later, my phone awakened me. Buzz was calling.

“You’ll never guess who called me at home last night, screaming his ass off, all drunk, demanding to know who the hell this Cordell Logan is?”

I yawned and rubbed my eyes. “Survey says Congressman Pierce Walton.”

“You ain’t kidding, Pierce Walton,” Buzz said. “He threatened to go public with all the dirt he says he’s got on the president if the president doesn’t back off. I’m telling you, the dude is off the hook.”

“What kind of dirt?”

“Beats me. I didn’t exactly get down in the weeds with him on it. Hell, it’s Washington. There’s dirt everywhere.”

I filled him in on what Simona had told me about Walton’s alleged influence peddling involving Emil Sokol and Praha Aeronautika. Buzz said he wanted me to make another run at Walton and be more adamant this time.

“You gotta get him to quit, Logan, before this whole thing blows up.”

After what Simona had told me of the congressman’s alleged habit of beating up prostitutes, I was eager to take another crack at him. I didn’t bother filling him in about having nearly gotten shot in my bed. In Buzz’s world, the only tales worth telling when it comes to gunfire are those that involve the actual spilling of blood. I suggested he have his staff go back through the Congressional Record to see how Walton voted on any defense-related appropriations bills in which Praha Aeronautika and Sokol might’ve profited.

“If you can nail down that financial connection—a notorious European crime boss linked to a sitting US congressman,” I said, “I guarantee you, Walton will exit stage left as fast as his wingtips will carry him.”

“That’s an outstanding idea.” Buzz sounded more enthusiastic than I’d heard him in a long time. “Forget every awful thing I ever said about you, Logan. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

I went back to sleep. Tried to, anyway. I couldn’t unplug my mind from the ugly image of a duly elected citizen-statesman like Pierce Walton tap dancing on the periphery of a double murder, cavorting with European pimps, and using call girls as punching bags. What would the Founding Fathers have thought? With all due respect to the Buddha, I wanted to hurt Walton. I wanted to drive my fist through those big, bleached teeth of his.

TWENTY-TWO

B
ack in Rancho Bonita, Birdwell’s Market & Deli wasn’t serving lunch yet. This is what the wanna-be rock star behind the counter with the apron and the Mohawk and the giant holes in his earlobes told me when I attempted to order a corned beef on rye.

“Check your clock, dude,” he said dismissively. “It’s still breakfast time.”

I explained that my aging landlady was recuperating from heart surgery, and that even though Birdwell’s sandwiches were notoriously overpriced, they were the best in town and she loved them because they reminded her of Brooklyn.

“I’m willing to pay whatever it takes to get one,” I said. “Not at lunchtime. Now.”

The rock star wouldn’t budge, not even when I offered him ten bucks on the side for his troubles.

“Wish I could, man,” he said. “Those are, like, the rules.”

My impulse was to grab him by his giant ear holes and, like, rewrite the rules, but then what kind of wanna-be Buddhist would that have made me? I grabbed a folded, laminated menu from one of several kept in a little stand beside the cash register.

“It says here you serve corned beef and eggs.”

“Sure do. Crazy good hash too. Homemade.” He picked up his order pad, pen in hand. “Would you like hash browns or home fries with that?”

“We’ll get to the potatoes in a second. What’s my choice on the toast?”

“White, wheat, pumpernickel, sourdough, rye, raisin, bagel, English muffin, blueberry muffin, bran-apple muffin.”

“OK, I’ll take two orders of corned beef and eggs. Hold the eggs, hold the potatoes, and slap the corned beef on rye bread, untoasted. Think you can do that?”

I dangled the ten-spot.

He reached across the counter for it. “I don’t see why not, man.”

“Outstanding. That’s to go, by the way.”

“You got it,” he said.

“W
HAT
,
NO
mustard?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Schmulowitz. I forgot the mustard.”

“Don’t sweat it, bubby. No big whoop. I’ll take it straight. What a mensch you are for bringing me a sandwich. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

She ate in small bites, sitting in her bed, chewing carefully, savoring the corned beef the way people in TV commercials always do when they eat anything delicious, with eyes closed and blissful smiles.

“If Nurse Ratched out there catches us we’re gonna both be in a world of trouble,” I said with my mouth full. “Just a hunch, but I’m pretty sure the hospital dietician isn’t real big on corned beef.”

“Not to worry. I got every nurse on the floor wrapped around my pinky. They all think I’m related to Leonardo DiCaprio. His great aunt. On his mother’s side.”

“What would make them think that?”

“Because I told them I was. Celebrities get first-class service wherever they go. Restaurants. Airplanes. Disneyland. I’m thinking, why not hospitals, am I right?”

There was a crisp knock at the door and in walked her heart surgeon, Dr. Afridi. A stethoscope was draped over the shoulders of his double-breasted suit coat.

“Good morning, young lady. How are we feeling today?”

“Great, now that I got some real food,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, making no effort to hide her sandwich. “The food around here stinks. I’d go on a hunger strike, but that would be an improvement on the menu.”

The doctor listened to her heart and told her she was making excellent progress.

“Mazel tov,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “How soon can I bust out?”

“Perhaps tomorrow,” Dr. Afridi said. “More likely, the day after. But you won’t be going home, Mrs. Schmulowitz. You’ll be going to a rehab for a while, until we know you’re strong enough to go home.”

“I’ll show you strong.” She started climbing out of bed.

I stopped her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Challenging this joker to a push-ups contest.”

“Please, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” Dr. Afridi said. “You must rest.”

“Dr. Afridi’s right, Mrs. Schmulowitz. You’re being a tad difficult. You can challenge him later.”

She sat back reluctantly. She didn’t mean to cause trouble, she said; she was just getting bored. She offered the doctor half her corned beef sandwich to make peace. He thanked her but said he was a practicing vegan.

“Listen,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, “I got nothing against leaf eaters. But if the Woman Upstairs didn’t want us eating animals, she wouldn’t have made them all out of food.”

Dr. Afridi said he’d be back in the morning and promised not to rat her out to the nursing staff about the corned beef.

After he left, she said, “I wish you’d find somebody nice and settle down before I move on to the next dimension, somebody who knows how to cook good brisket and knows football, who could make you happy. I wish I could rewind the clock fifty years, and that somebody was me.”

“Me too.” I leaned over and kissed her forehead. Mrs. Schmulowitz was many things, but overly serious was rarely one of them. I wasn’t sure what had brought it on. I didn’t ask.

She wiped off a few crumbs with the back of her right hand. “Anyhow, the good news is, I’m not planning on visiting my various dearly departed ex-husbands anytime soon, may they all rest in peace, so we’ve got plenty of time to snag you the catch of your dreams. What about that gal detective down in San Diego with the body, the one you’ve been seeing on and off? What’s her name again?”

“Alicia.”

“That’s right. Alicia. So what’s going on with you two kids? Should I keep my fingers crossed? What about sexual compatibility? Sex is a very important part of a relationship, you know. Any hang-ups there? You can talk to me, bubby. Trust me, if there’s one thing I know, it’s hang-ups.”

Imagine confiding the details of your love life to your grandmother, and you can begin to understand the extent of my discomfort as I stood there.

“We’re good friends,” I said. “Whether it moves on to the next level I guess you could say remains to be seen.”

“Well, if you need any pointers,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, patting me on the cheek, “you let me know. Meanwhile there are some good-looking RNs running around this hospital, I’m here to tell you. I might try fixing you up with one of them. You know what they say about nurses, don’t you?”

I actually have no idea what they say, but I returned her wink like I did.

T
HE
DOME
of high pressure that had dominated Rancho Bonita for what seemed like weeks was finally beginning to break down. An ocean breeze, soft and moist, wafted in over the coast, bringing with it low, scudding clouds and a tangible air of relief. Outside the hospital, finches tittered busily in the trees. People seemed to be smiling more, with a lilt in their steps, as if all of their cares had suddenly been erased. This included the zaftig parking enforcement officer who was slapping a ticket under my truck’s windshield wiper.

“What’s this for?” I demanded.

“You’re parked in a loading zone.”

“I was visiting a friend in the intensive care unit,” I said. “She just had heart surgery.”

“Not my problem,” the meter maid said, beaming, as she got back in her double-parked, three-wheeled scooter. “Isn’t this weather amazing? This is why we all live here. You have yourself a great day.”

“Yeah,” I said, staring at the $79 fine spelled out on the back of the ticket, “you too.”

That’s when Buzz telephoned. Per my suggestion, he’d tasked his people with digging through Congressman Walton’s voting record. They’d struck pay dirt. Buried deep in the Department of Defense’s current budget, under an addendum to something called the “NATO Support and Security Acquisitions Program,” Buzz’s team had stumbled on a line-item expenditure for $184 million covering the purchase of seven Praha Aeronautika J-266 Blesk jet fighters. The aircraft were to be used by NATO to help train Belgian and Italian military pilots.

Walton had been directly responsible for getting the sale approved, Buzz said, and was later “handsomely compensated” by none other than Emil Sokol. This is how it worked:

Conference committee reports filed in the Congressional Record showed that while lawmakers wrangled over the Pentagon’s budget, Walton had reached out to ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, lobbying them to consider the US acquisition of Praha aircraft.

“In a global economy, and in an era when domestic defense contractors routinely pad their proposals by billions,” Walton wrote to Arizona Republican John McCain, “it is vital that our citizens receive the greatest value for their hard-earned tax dollars. Approving the purchase of excellent, affordable aircraft made by Praha Aeronautika for US military training purposes would send an invaluable message to Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and other major defense contractors, that waste in federal spending will no longer be tolerated.”

Walton’s efforts to persuade Congress that it needed to equip American military forces with Czech-made jet trainers gained little traction; if McCain responded to his letter, it was not entered into the official record. Walton appeared to have had substantially greater success dealing directly with the Defense Department, where NATO-designated funds were later earmarked to buy the Czech-built jets. The expenditure was among thousands buried in a three-inch thick, $615 billion budget package that nobody in Congress apparently ever actually read.

Searching through computerized lists of federal election campaign contributions, Buzz’s people had found that on the very day that Walton and other House members voted overwhelmingly to approve the Defense Department budget, a prominent Washington-based lobbying group, Greenwood-Fetherling, LLC, made a $100,000 donation to Walton’s reelection campaign.

“And you’ll never guess,” Buzz said, “who one of Greenwood-Fetherling’s major clients is.”

“I’m going to take a wild stab at it and guess Praha Aeronautika.”

“Give that man a cookie. Federal election law says in plain language that these greedy jerk-offs we keep sending to Washington aren’t supposed to take foreign money. It’s a straight-up crime. They’re looking at serious time in Leavenworth. So foreigners like Praha Aeronautika hire DC lobbyists to cut the checks for them. Happens all the time.”