Hot Start (12 page)

“I did some quick checking on you before we rolled up here,” Kopecky said. “Your government service record is awful spooky, Mr. Logan. Restricted access, top secret authorization required. Who knows who you really are and what your real agenda is.”

“My real agenda is getting out of this heat.” I got up from my rock and stretched the stiffness from my back. “You’ve got my number. I’m always happy to help out Johnny law. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go home and stick my head in the freezer.”

The detective was blocking the trail. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again, Mr. Logan.”

“Looking forward to it.”

He stepped aside.

C
UTTING
THROUGH
the backyard on the way to my apartment, I happened to glance over at Mrs. Schmulowitz’s back door. It was open. Through the screen door, I could see her sprawled facedown on the kitchen floor.
Oh, please, no.

I ran, bounding up the steps of the back porch and inside.

“Mrs. Schmulowitz!”

She wasn’t moving. I knelt beside her, careful not to move her, and pressed my fingers to her neck, hoping to find a pulse.

“I really do need to sweep in here more often,” she said. “This floor is a mess.”

I rolled her over. “Are you OK, Mrs. Schmulowitz? You scared the heck out of me.”

“Don’t mind me, bubby. Just got a little lightheaded, that’s all. I’ll be fine.”

She was gasping for breath, soaked with sweat, and clutching her left shoulder. I called 911, my own heart pounding. Then I grabbed an aspirin bottle out of her medicine cabinet.

“When did this happen, Mrs. Schmulowitz?”

“When? Who knows? Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Good gravy, will you look at this floor?”

“The floor can wait, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

I poured her a glass of water from the sink and made her chew an aspirin, then pulled a seat cushion off one of the chairs and put it behind her head. Kiddiot sat in the hallway, his tail wrapped around his front paws, and watched with rapt fascination.

“The ambulance is coming,” I said.

“Ever hear the one about the woman who needs a new heart and the doctor tells her that the only one available is from a sheep?”

“Now is not the time for jokes, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

“Are you kidding, bubby? Now is the
perfect
time for jokes. So this woman agrees to have a transplant and the doctor goes with the sheep’s heart.” She paused, catching her breath. “The next day, he’s making his hospital rounds. The doctor asks her, ‘So, how’re you feeling today?’ She thinks about it for a second, then she says, ‘You know, not
baaaaad
.’ Get it? ‘Not
baaaaad.
’ ”

“I got it. Where the hell’s the ambulance?”

“It’s gonna be OK.” Mrs. Schmulowitz reached out and squeezed my hand, less frightened than I was.
“Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be. Just do me one thing.”

“Anything.”

“If they have to resuscitate me, give me mouth-to-mouth, whatever, just please make sure the doctor looks like George Clooney. You get to be my age, these kinds of opportunities don’t come along too often.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

Both paramedics were female. They looked fresh out of high school. They did, however, look like they knew what they were doing and went about their work with a swift efficiency that I found comforting. Only after they’d slipped an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth did Mrs. Schmulowitz cease trying to make them laugh. Less than five minutes after arriving, they’d loaded her into their ambulance. I followed them in my truck.

T
HE
HOSPITAL
waiting area for friends and relatives of cardiac care patients was a cut above the emergency room waiting area two floors below. There was hot coffee and air conditioning. The furniture didn’t smell of urine or blood. On the wall was a flat-screen television tuned to a Spanish language soap opera. I appeared to be the only person in the room not watching it.

With nothing else to do, I checked my e-mail. Amid the usual useless clutter was a response from the Hollisters’ former pilot, Evan Gantz. He said he was writing on a layover in Bahrain and wanted to know what was so important that I had to speak with him urgently. The e-mail was more than four hours old. I wrote back,
“European call girls and a certain Rancho Bonita congressman
.”

I forced myself to be distracted by the television, understanding very little of what was being said. As near as I could figure, the story revolved around a small-town girl with pigtails named Maria who worked for a rich family in Mexico City while being wooed by a cad named Juan Carlos. Somewhere along the way, I nodded off. Two hours later, I awakened to the heart surgeon’s hand on my shoulder.

“Mr. Logan, I am Dr. Afridi. Let’s chat in the hallway.” He was a short, round man of Pakistani extract, in booties and blue scrubs. Nervously I arose, wiped the sleep from my eyes, and followed him out to the elevators.

“How’d she do, doc?”

“For an elderly woman of her age, with two occluded arteries and a calcified aortic valve, I’d have to say, not bad.”

I smiled in spite of myself, thinking about Mrs. Schmulowitz’s cheesy sheep joke.

“Was it something I said, Mr. Logan?” the surgeon asked.

“No, sir.” I cleared my throat. “Is she going to make it?”

“I’m afraid given her advanced age, the odds are against her. However, she is rather feisty, a fighter, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Fighters tend to do better in these situations. It’s hour by hour. All we can do now is take the best care of her that we can and hope.”

“I can definitely do that.”

We shook hands. He turned to get on an elevator, then remembered something. “Oh, by the way, she did ask before the anesthesia was administered that I convey to you a message. Something about George Clooney. She said you’d know what it meant.”

I smiled. “Please tell her I’m working on it, and that I’ll see her soon.”

“I will. Good day, Mr. Logan.”

“To you as well, Doctor. Thank you.”

He disappeared behind the elevator doors as I fought back tears. You meet few people in life like Mrs. Schmulowitz. The ones who enrich you without asking anything in return, whose contribution to the better good can be measured not so much in tangible achievement as in the frequency with which they make you smile whenever you’re in their presence, and even when you’re not. The thought of losing her left a lump in my throat the size of her native Brooklyn. Hyperbole aside, that’s how I felt.

The hospital’s cafeteria was adjacent to the lobby. The special of the day, as advertised on the freestanding chalkboard out front, was something called “seafood casserole.” It looked like something the ocean might’ve spit back. The soup du jour was french onion, which looked like an oil slick in a bowl. The menu included a selection of “heart healthy Mexican food,” a contradiction in terms if there ever was one. I ordered a turkey on rye, mustard, no mayo, with a side of macaroni salad—and I don’t even like macaroni salad. But at least it was filling.

No sooner had I sat down to eat when Buzz telephoned.

“Pack your bags, cowboy,” he said, “you’re going to Prague tonight.”

“What’s in Prague?”

“Majestic castles, outstanding goulash, and one reclusive Czech organized crime boss named Emil Sokol. You’re gonna hunt him down and find out how closely he and this hooker operation you told me about are linked to a certain member of Congress from your district, who just happens to be friends with the most powerful human being on the planet.”

“So your sources at the bureau talked?”

“More or less.”

Working closely with Interpol, FBI field agents had been actively investigating the international prostitution ring for months in what FBI officials had informally dubbed, as only those fun-minded G-men can, “Operation Johnny Cum Lately.” The plan was to flip potential informants like safari impresario Roy Hollister, granting them immunity or lighter sentences in exchange for testifying against bigger, more high-profile fish— namely, the titans of industry, politicians, and other international high rollers who paid for the hookers’ services. Agents suspected that tax dollars in some instances had been used to pay for sexual acts. They’d been focusing on that aspect of the case when Hollister was murdered.

Was Congressman Pierce Walton among those steady customers? Had he used public money to sleep with $10,000-a-night, international call girls? The FBI, according to Buzz, didn’t know.

“That’s why you’re going to Prague, to talk to Sokol,” he said. “The FBI thinks he was running this shebang directly and that your boy Walton’s part of it.”

“What makes you think Sokol will talk to me, assuming I can even find him?”

“Other than your sunny disposition and persuasive charm? I’ll tell you why: because you have the weight of the White House behind you. No president has ever been more fiercely loyal to his political allies than this one. Pierce Walton is an ally. I can tell you there’s reluctance behind the scenes to piss backward on him. But if he is dirty, that’s exactly what’ll happen, and the sooner you can nail all this down, the better.”

I reminded him of the photo I’d seen in Kang’s bodega, of Walton and Hollister and the three women in the back of Hollister’s jet.

“Proves nothing,” Buzz said. “Who’s to say the picture wasn’t manipulated? How’d your guy have it in his possession in the first place? Where’d he get it? Who the hell gave it to him? These are questions that need answers.”

“I’ve asked. He won’t say.”

“Yeah, well, hopefully this Sokol guy will know more. We’re dealing with major damage control here, Logan. I got my thumb in the dike, OK? You need to get down in the weeds on this thing pronto and get some answers.”

I’d asked Buzz to dig up whatever information he could on “Mary,” the woman who’d called to tip me off that the Hollisters had been offed not because of Roy’s safari business, but because of his ties to international prostitution.

“I couldn’t find squat on her,” Buzz said. “If I had more time, maybe. If you had tracking software on your phone, absolutely. Right now, though, your focus has to be on Sokol.”

His office, Buzz said, had already made flight and hotel arrangements for me. Funds to cover my expenses had already been wired directly into my checking account. I’d be leaving late that night—a puddle jumper from Rancho Bonita to LAX, then on to Frankfurt via economy class, and Frankfurt to Prague. Once on the ground, I was to make contact with an FBI-vetted go-between who’d put me in touch with Sokol.

“Whatever happened to flying business class?”

“Haven’t you heard, Logan? There’s this thing now called the ‘deficit.’ Hell, we’re lucky these days the Congressional Budget Office isn’t making us reuse toilet paper.”

“What if Sokol wants money? You know how these dick weeds operate, Buzz. They never give away information. They sell it.”

“The White House paying a known dirtbag for intelligence on an international prostitution ring? Do you have any idea what the Sunday morning talk shows would do with that kind of information?”

“So how do you expect me to get in there and get the straight skinny?”

“Look, I already argued all about this with White House staff counsel. We’re not paying the guy. Period. You’re just gonna have to get in there, Logan, and sweet-talk the guy. Get him drunk or something. A shame you don’t drink anymore. Czech beer rocks.”

“So I vaguely remember.”

“Hey, look at it this way: you get a free trip to Europe. Only this time, you don’t have to kill anybody.”

“You always were a glass half-full kinda guy, Buzz.”

“Tell it to my wife,” he grunted before hanging up.

I didn’t bother calling Gil Carlisle to update him on everything I’d learned since our last conversation. Much of it was probably classified, anyway. Besides, I had other, more pressing concerns on my mind.

Mrs. Schmulowitz had been transferred from the recovery room to cardiac intensive care by the time I returned upstairs. She remained unconscious. That was to be expected, a nurse told me as she did paperwork at the nursing station outside the unit. I said I wanted to see her.

“Are you her son?” the nurse wanted to know.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Yes or no?”

“No. Her real son is back east. She doesn’t see him that often.”

“Happens a lot these days with kids and their parents,” the nurse said. “We don’t take care of our senior citizens like we once did, but I’m afraid you can’t go in. Only immediate family is allowed. Hospital rules.”

I borrowed a piece of paper from her and wrote Mrs. Schmulowitz a note wishing her a speedy recovery, explaining that I’d be out of town a few days, and that I’d bring her flowers when I got back. Don’t worry about Kiddiot, I said. I’d find somebody to take care of him. I signed it, “Your loving tenant and fellow football fanatic, Cordell.” The nurse promised to read it to her as soon as she woke up.

Walking out of the hospital, I thought to myself that this is what a deserter must feel like, but I knew there wasn’t much else I could do. That’s how it always works. You learn to compartmentalize. You put the civilians you love in a box, shove that box to the very back of your brain. The people in the box essentially cease to exist until you come home. To think of them and their problems while you’re on the job is to be distracted, and to be distracted can prove fatal. So you train yourself to forget them temporarily. By the time I got to my truck, I wasn’t thinking about Mrs. Schmulowitz at all.

Stan next door agreed to feed Kiddiot in my absence. He wanted to know where I was going and my opinion of immigration reform. I handed him a case of canned cat food, told him I was late for the airport, which I was, and went to go throw a few clothes into my duffel. I thought about taking my revolver, then I thought twice. Pack heat in America and some consider you a patriot. Do the same in Europe, and suddenly you’re a card-carrying member of the Islamic State. I left the gun behind.

T
HE
L
UFTHANSA
flight over the pond was uneventful. I slept most of the way, leaning against the window back in the cheap seats of a tired old 747, awakening only long enough to eat dinner, which was really breakfast. Chicken and boiled potatoes with a stewed tomato and a sausage on the side. Wine was free, not that it mattered to me. An older Greek couple sitting next to me got tipsy and began arguing with each other in their native tongue, about what I couldn’t tell, until our very Prussian flight steward politely but firmly leaned over and told them in English to zip it. We touched down in Frankfurt at 1705 hours.