Hot Start (3 page)

“No.”

“Elephant, rhino, Cape buffalo, leopard, and lion. Maybe he was nice to you, Larry, but if the guy would’ve had his way, there would’ve been no Noah’s ark.”

“You’re wrong, Logan. Hollister was a conservationist. Most of those animals were old or sick. They would’ve died anyway. And, besides, he wasn’t doing hardly any of the hunting himself. He got paid to charter safaris. He made hotel arrangements, bought the beer, made sure his clients were happy. It’s called earning a healthy living, which is something you might want to think about, amigo.”

Again I formed words in my head that I knew I could never utter. How could I tell Larry that after having spent nearly a decade stalking rabid human beings around the globe in the name of national security, I couldn’t stomach hunting of any kind? How could I tell him what it was like to see the animal-like fear in the eyes of men who knew they were about to die, and to see that same look over and over again, up close and personal, month after month? How could I tell him what it felt like to see those eyes staring down at me from the ceiling, night after sleepless night?

I’d shared with him once how I had transferred to Air Force Intelligence after it was determined that my football-damaged, reconstructed knee could no longer withstand the rigors of combat flying. What I hadn’t told him was how I had ultimately been assigned to a highly classified, direct action unit called Alpha that, before being disbanded by secret presidential decree, had neutralized suspected militants wherever we found them. I had been sworn to take the unit’s secrets with me to the grave. I wasn’t about to give up any of them now, or the fact that I still occasionally dabbled in that world. I leaned closer to the fan and let it blow on my face.

“So who shot the Hollisters?”

“Dino Birch,” Larry said.

“Who’s Dino Birch?”

“That nutty animal rights guy. You have no clue what’s going on around town, do you, Logan?” He tossed the morning’s newspaper on my desk, grabbed another fistful of Oreos, and headed for the door, grimacing on bad knees. “Oh, by the way, you’re late on this month’s rent.”

“Check’s in the mail, Larry.”

“Like I haven’t heard that before.”

I was down to five cookies. Their creamy filling was melting in the heat. I unscrewed each one, scraping the frosting with my front teeth, and read the front page.

Quoting unnamed sources, the
Sun
reported that Birch’s arrest was imminent. He’d been the Rancho Bonita Police Department’s prime, if only, suspect all along. According to the paper, Birch had served in the army as a sniper and a scout-dog handler, first in Afghanistan and later in the Horn of Africa, before being honorably discharged and picking up a bachelor’s degree in animal behavior from the University of California at Davis. Soon afterward, he opened a nonprofit in Rancho Bonita called “HEAT”—Helping Endangered Animals Thrive. His one-man organization, supported by a meager stream of donations from like-minded individuals across the country, had established a reputation for its particularly strident, in-your-face defense of endangered species. In Tokyo, Birch had been detained for a few weeks after hurling cream pies at Japanese officials attending an international whaling summit. In Russia, he’d threatened the owners of a traveling circus accused of mistreating their dancing bears. Closer to home, Birch’s name had surfaced in the 2015 disappearance of a Bay Area pharmaceuticals researcher who’d been conducting lab experiments of some sort on monkeys when he went missing. The researcher’s body was never found. San Jose police had briefly questioned Birch, the paper said, before concluding that he was not involved in the disappearance.

The article detailed Roy Hollister’s rise from a poor kid growing up in the cotton fields of California’s San Joaquin Valley to a multimillionaire living in a mansion with an unobstructed ocean view, all thanks to his fascination with firearms. A photo of Hollister that accompanied the story, taken from his website, showed a ruddy, heavyset man garbed in a safari jacket and cowboy hat, posing proudly beside the lion he’d just shot with a scoped hunting rifle.

Toni Hollister’s photo revealed a petite, blue-eyed blonde with a winning smile, wearing a flowing, cherry red dress with ruffles, like a flamenco dancer’s. Her hair was pinned up and she was clutching a red lace fan in her right hand. The caption said the photo had been taken the year before during Old Conquistador Days, Rancho Bonita’s annual tribute to its colonial Spanish heritage. Toni was described in the article as universally liked, a charming and outgoing woman happy to write a five- or six-figure check for even the most obscure local charity. Eighteen years his junior, she’d met the twice-divorced Roy in 2007 while scraping plaque from his teeth and married him three weeks later. They honeymooned in Zimbabwe where, at his instruction, she shot a kudu. It was the first and last time she ever fired a gun, according to friends quoted in the story. Hunting sickened her, but she genuinely loved Roy and put aside whatever issues she had with the way he made his money. “His good qualities,” she reportedly told acquaintances, “outweighed his bad.”

Had Dino Birch shot the Hollisters in defense of defenseless animals? That certainly seemed plausible, but frankly, I was more concerned at that moment with eating my remaining Oreos before they melted.

The day, as it turned out, would only get hotter.

TWO

W
hen you’re trapped in a heat wave, and when your truck, your residence, and place of work all lack air conditioning, you’ll find any excuse to hang out anywhere that does have AC—typically movie theaters and restaurants. My dilemma was that it was probably too early for a matinee, and I had no appetite after downing so many cookies. I drove instead to the one place with Arctic-like temperatures where I knew I could linger as long as I wanted—my favorite mecca of shameless consumerism, Costco. Much of Rancho Bonita seemed to have had the same idea. The warehouse was mobbed.

I navigated my empty cart through aisles clogged with shoppers with their own empty carts who, like me, appeared relieved to be out of the heat. I paused to read the small print on items I had no intention of buying. A $328 electric letter opener? A two-gallon jar of imported Spanish olives? Seriously?

I decided to head over to pet supplies and was thinking about buying Kiddiot a new cat bed, not that he deserved one, when I literally ran into Eric Ivory—or, rather, he ran into me. His cart was so overloaded with stuff, he couldn’t see where he was going.

“Oops. Sorry, man.”

“No worries.”

Ivory recognized me and smiled. “Hey, what are you doing here, Logan?”

“Pretending to shop.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said, glancing at my cart and grinning.

We shook hands.

Good-looking in a beefy, weathered ex-jock sort of way, with a raspy voice that sounded like two rocks grinding together, Ivory owned and operated “Immaculate Wings,” a one-man, mobile aircraft-cleaning service. From as far south as Oxnard and north to San Luis Obispo, he would drive to the airport where your bird was parked and, for a few hundred dollars up to several thousand, wash and wax until it shined. I’d see him once in a while around the Rancho Bonita Airport, but I could never afford what he charged. Even if I could’ve, there was little he could’ve done to spruce up my plane. The
Ruptured Duck’s
paint was so sun-faded in spots, I would’ve worried about melanoma had the skin not been made of aluminum.

I nodded toward Ivory’s shopping cart, filled with cases of red wine, T-bone steaks, and enough fresh crab legs to feed a football team. “Business must be good.”

“I got no complaints,” he said, chewing on his ever-present toothpick. “Business
was
booming, until poor old Roy Hollister had to go and get himself shot. You see the paper this morning, that animal rights guy? Dude sounds like a complete nut job.”

“I read the story, but I don’t understand,” I said. “You’re saying your business was good until Hollister got shot?”

“Roy was a steady gig. I used to service their Citation every week, top to bottom, whether it needed it or not. Disinfectant, steam clean the carpets, the whole nine yards. Let me put it this way: he had some issues with germs, OK? Not a lot of people knew that about him. He could be a real jerk sometimes. But Toni, man, she was a sweetheart. Beautiful lady. Always incredibly nice to me, to everybody. We got to be pretty tight there for a while. A real shame, them getting killed that way. That kind of stuff happens down in LA, not here.”

“True.”

“I’m just glad they found the guy who did it. I heard on the radio they were planning to make an arrest today or tomorrow.”

A slender Latina in spike heels and skinny jeans pushed a flat cart past us piled high with cartons of fresh vegetables and fifty-pound bags of rice.

“Well, anyway,” Ivory said, focused on her well-formed backside. “Hey, you don’t need your plane cleaned, do you, Logan? I’ll give you a great deal. Make that crate looking good as new. I do cars too. Even ratty old pickups like yours.”

“Tell you what: I’ll call you after I’ve made my first million.”

“You do that.”

We shook hands again.

“Good seeing you, Logan. You take care of yourself.”

“You as well, Eric.”

As I pushed on, down the aisle, he hollered after me, “Hey, you know how to make a million bucks in general aviation, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said, “start with two million.”

Ivory grinned.

A
FTER
PAYING
for an eight-pack of toothbrushes because I felt like I had to buy
something
for having loitered as long as I had in Costco’s air-conditioned splendor, I caught a German film with subtitles downtown at Rancho Bonita’s only art house movie theater, and only because it was air-conditioned. After that, I grabbed dinner at the air-conditioned International House of Pancakes on California Street. I couldn’t decide which left a worse taste in my mouth, a comedic biopic exploring the little-known humorous side of Franz Kafka or IHOP’s fried chicken. I was home by 1900 hours.

My octogenarian landlady, Mrs. Schmulowitz, was visiting some of her former fellow junior high school teachers back East for a week and wouldn’t be returning until the next day. Kiddiot and I had the entire spread to ourselves—only it was too uncomfortably warm to stay indoors for very long. Mrs. Schmulowitz’s tidy, 1920s bungalow felt like a sauna. The two-car converted garage I rented out back was even hotter. I could’ve baked donuts in there. Had I not been on the wagon, I might’ve found refuge in an air-conditioned wine bar, of which there was no shortage in Rancho Bonita, and whiled away the evening in lubricated comfort. I took off my shirt instead amid the walled privacy of Mrs. Schmulowitz’s tiny backyard and lay down in the rope hammock under her oak tree. There was not even the hint of a breeze.

Within seconds, Kiddiot jumped up on me.

“It’s a hundred degrees out here. I don’t need some overheated pelt sitting on me right now. Please get off.”

My rotund orange tabby, with his undersized brain and oversized ego, yawned dismissively, then began bathing himself on my chest.

“Did you not hear what I just said?”

He ignored me. He always did.

Robert Heinlein, the great science fiction writer, once said that women and cats will always do as they please, and that men and dogs should just get used to it. Rooming with Kiddiot, I had struggled over the years to embrace Heinlein’s advice. Some days were more challenging than others. I had resigned myself to letting him stay where I was when the cell phone in my pocket vibrated, prompting Kiddiot to dig his claws into my stomach—ouch—before jumping off.

I dug out my phone and read the caller’s name: Gil Carlisle, my former-father-in-law.

“How’ve you been, Cordell Logan?” he asked in that West Texas twang of his.

“No complaints, Gil. You?”

“Wish I could say the same. Listen, you got a second or two?”

“Sure.”

When we’d last spoken, Carlisle had told me to burn in hell, or words to that effect. He’d had ample reason. My ex-wife, his daughter, Savannah, had died because of me, killed brutally in retribution after I had allowed myself to get sucked in to an investigation that I never should’ve. Savannah and I had been planning to remarry when it happened. I couldn’t save her and Carlisle couldn’t forgive me. Not that I could have expected him to. I couldn’t forgive myself. Two years had passed since Savannah’s death. The scars were still fresh. If there was a hole deep enough to bury that kind of pain, I had yet to find it.

“I’m not calling to talk about Savannah,” he said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not sure what I was thinking.”

“Hell,” he said with a little chuckle, “that pretty much sums up my state of mind most all the time.”

He was lying, of course. Gil Carlisle knew what he was thinking and doing every waking minute of every day. One doesn’t become a megawealthy oil magnate, with penthouses in Houston and Las Vegas, a chalet in Aspen, and a chateau in Italy’s lake country, by being dazed and confused.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “You ever heard of an animal rights activist name of Dino Birch? He lives out in your neck of the woods.”

“I know who he is. He’s all over the local news.”

“National too. There was a story in this morning’s
New York Times
. What you might not know is that Dino’s my nephew by marriage. My sister Norma’s youngest son.”

“That would make him Savannah’s cousin.”

“Yes, it would,” Carlisle said.

“I don’t recall Savannah ever mentioning she had a cousin Dino,” I said.

“Doesn’t surprise me. I doubt they ever met. The family’s not all that close, as I’m sure you may remember.”

“I remember.”

Through the oak branches, I watched a crescent moon play hide and seek behind skittering wisps of high cirrus. Somewhere far off, down in the direction of the beach, mariachi music played.

“In any case,” Carlisle said, “I need you to do me a small favor. But before you say yea or nay, please understand I won’t hold it against you if you tell me no.”