Hot Start (16 page)

“I’m genuinely touched, Buzz. I never knew you cared so much.”

“Cared? I couldn’t care less. The only thing I care about is the intel you were sent over there to get.”

“I’ll fill you in when I get back.”

“You’ll fill me in now.”

“Buzz, my flight boards in five minutes.”

“You don’t get it, Logan. I got people in Washington, way up the food chain, breathing down my neck like it’s the end of life as we know it. They want answers, and they want ’em now. Spare me the chapter and verse and just gimme the broad strokes. I can read the nuts and bolts in your after-action report.”

I briefed him on what Sokol had told me: That on multiple occasions, Roy Hollister had used his jet to transport call girls from Europe to the United States and back, and that for each roundtrip passenger, Sokol paid Hollister $25,000. All of the flights were between Prague and New York or Washington, DC.

“Why not fly commercial?” Buzz asked. “Way cheaper that way.”

“A lot of these ladies’ names show up on no-fly lists. Some also have outstanding warrants. Security is considerably more lax flying in and out of the country on executive aircraft. No TSA checkpoints, typically minimal DHS presence on the ramp.”

At one point, Sokol had broken down and cried crocodile tears, I told Buzz. Sokol’s top call girl, a slinky blonde he called Nina, had disappeared weeks earlier. He’d shown me a photo of her in a small bikini, the pierced naval, the big Kim Kardashian sunglasses, lounging poolside somewhere, sipping an umbrella drink. A scorpion was tattooed on her left flank. He told me how much he loved her and how he’d hoped to marry her one day.

“Sounds like a bad soap opera to me,” Buzz said, “and none of that comes close to addressing why I sent you over there, Logan: to find out whether a certain member of Congress and close friend of my boss had anything to do with the untimely demise of a certain safari leader from your neck of the woods.”

Sokol, I said, had denied any knowledge of Roy Hollister’s murder, and denied having had a motive to commit it. Even had Hollister been forced to name names to a federal grand jury, there would have been little chance of Sokol being extradited to the United States, given that many leading Czech law enforcement officials were among his most loyal customers.

“You’re still not getting to the heart of it, Logan. Did you ask him about Walton?”

“He said he’d never heard of Walton.”

“And you believed him?”

“To the extent that I believe anybody.”

Buzz exhaled. “I’ll pass it up the chain,” he said. “Call me when you’re stateside.”

The flight was to Munich, then a connection through Frankfurt and on to Los Angeles, before I could look forward to squeezing into a cramped regional jet to Rancho Bonita. When I wasn’t thinking about my painfully battered face, I thought about Savannah and her father, and how he’d gotten me in to this mess. I thought about all that happened in Prague. I wondered if “Mary,” who’d called before I’d left home to clue me in on Sokol’s prostitution ring, and Sokol’s beloved Nina, the hooker who’d gone missing, were one and the same. I wondered if Sokol was lying when he told me he’d never heard of Congressman Pierce Walton. I wondered whether Czech investigators would figure out who had shot a man blocks from where I’d been staying in Prague and would demand my return. Touching down in Los Angeles, a continent away from where the damage had been done, brought little relief.

My layover at LAX was fifty minutes, barely enough time to be herded off the plane and make it through customs before racing between terminals to my final connecting flight. I checked my e-mail on the run. The only message of note was from Emirates pilot Evan Gantz, who’d flown for Roy Hollister. He’d be returning to California in a couple of days to attend a wedding. He would get back to me, he said, letting me know if he had time to meet.

“Re hookers and politicians,” Gantz wrote. “I’m curious to know what you know.”

He asked for my telephone number. I sent it to him.

M
RS
. S
CHMULOWITZ
was in rare form that evening, giving the intensive care nurse a hard time. Days removed from major heart surgery, with her chest sewn back together and tubes everywhere, she was still feisty.

“What is it with this liquid diet nonsense? Listen, if I don’t start getting some real food around here,” she said, “I’m going full Rambo and, believe me, you don’t want to see that.”

“Now Mrs. Schmulowitz,” the nurse said, calmly taking her pulse, “you know what Dr. Afridi said.”

“Dr. Afridi? I hate Dr. Afridi. Look what a mess he’s made of me!”

“Dr. Afridi saved your life, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” I said. “You don’t hate him. You don’t hate anybody.”

“OK, you’re right. I don’t hate. All I’m saying is, if Dr. Afridi got hit by a bus, I’d be driving that bus—unless I was driving to the Carnegie Deli to pick up a corned beef sandwich. I’m
starving
here.”

The nurse looked up at me and rolled her eyes.

I leaned down and whispered in Mrs. Schmulowitz’s ear, “Pumpernickel or rye?”

“Pumpernickel?” she responded loudly. “Who orders corned beef on pumpernickel? Why not ask me if I want it on white bread, with mayo?”

“OK, rye it is.”

“No solid food until all her lab work comes back normal,” the nurse said. “Doctor’s orders.”

We couldn’t wait for her to leave.

“Now I know how Gandhi felt, all those hunger strikes,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “What happened to your schnozzle, bubby?”

“Some guy hit me.”

“Did you deserve it?”

“For once in my life, I didn’t.”

“How do I look?”

“You look divine, Mrs. Schmulowitz, as always.”

She reached up and patted my cheek affectionately, her toothpick arm attached to an IV line, her skin bruised black and blue from too many blood draws. “You don’t have to lie to me, bubby. I know I’m dying.”

“You’re not dying, Mrs. Schmulowitz. You’re too tough to die.”

I vowed to bring her a corned beef on rye and promised to return with it first thing in the morning. She blew me a kiss. I waited until she dozed off, then left.

They say the elderly often know when they’re about to pass on to whatever exists after this life. I hoped Mrs. Schmulowitz was wrong.

S
TAN
THE
postal worker next door wanted to know if he could keep my cat. Permanently.

“Smart as a whip,” he said when I went over to pick up Kiddiot.

“Are you sure we’re talking the same cat?”

The only thing I could conclude was that either Stan was on medication, or the world’s stupidest feline had a split personality of which I was unaware. I muttered something about Kiddiot being as close as I’d ever come to having a son—an intellectually challenged son, but a son nonetheless—and that while I appreciated Stan taking such good care of him while I was away, it was time for us both to be going home. Right then, Kiddiot came rocketing out of Stan’s front door like an orange pelt fired from a howitzer and bolted toward our garage abode.

“Well,” I said, “looks like that answers that.”

“How’s your landlady doing?”

“Hanging in there.”

“You tell her Stan next door said hello and that I hope she’s feeling better. Mrs. Schmulowitz is OK in my book, even if she is a Democrat.”

“I’ll pass it along.”

Upon my return home, I found Kiddiot atop the refrigerator. He was going for the cat cuteness award, looking at me upside down with his paws in the air and purring. He let me pet him for about five seconds before he clawed me, bounded off the fridge, and went racing back out the cat door.

“Yeah,” I muttered, “I missed you too.”

The light was blinking on my answering machine—one message. Don’t ask me why I still paid for a landline in the age of mobile communications. I’d given the number to Savannah years before, after we broke up, always hoping she’d call. These days, I kept it out of habit, a tether to the past.

I pushed “play.”

THIRTEEN

W
hile I was causing trouble in Europe, back in Rancho Bonita, animal rights activist and suspected double murderer Dino Birch had found himself an alibi.

“He got his dates wrong,” his uncle, Gil Carlisle, said on my machine. “Dino was at a massage parlor that night, right when the police say that couple got shot.”

A massage parlor. Great.

“Now before you say anything,” Carlisle said when I called him back, “know this: I believe the kid. He was in Afghanistan, Cordell. He’s got PTSD. He gets things turned around sometimes in his head, dates messed up. I just hired him supposedly the best defense attorney on the West Coast. He’s somewhat skeptical though.”

“Makes two of us.”

“Why’re you skeptical?”

“Gil, people who work in massage parlors are about as credible as those who work at carnivals, or people who worked in the Nixon administration. They’ll say anything for a price.”

“What’re you saying?”

“I’m saying that if I was a prosecutor, the first thing I’d be wondering is whether the defendant’s oil millionaire uncle paid them to say whatever he wanted them to say. Your attorney’s probably wondering the same thing.”

“Now you wait just one damn minute,” Carlisle said. “You got no right accusing me of that, Cordell. I got no dog in this fight. Yes, Dino’s kin. I’m not going to deny that, but I don’t buy off people. I’m a businessman with an impeccable reputation. Above board all the way. You should know that about me by now.”

What I knew but didn’t say was that Carlisle was used to getting his way no matter what it took.

I didn’t tell him about the thug I’d shot to death in Prague or my meeting with Emil Sokol. I told him nothing about Roy Hollister having freighted call girls around the world in his jet, or about my local congressman’s apparent penchant for illicit sex. None of it disproved the working theory that his nephew, Dino Birch, remained a prime suspect in two murders.

“I want you to go to that massage parlor before Dino’s attorney tells the police about this,” Carlisle said. “Get ’em to sign a sworn affidavit to the fact that he was there that night.”

“You’re paying the attorney, Gil. Your attorney has investigators. That’s their job.”

“I don’t know them. I don’t trust them. I know you. I trust you. I promise, I’ll never ask you for another thing. Please, Cordell. For my family. For Savannah’s memory.”

Savannah’s memory. In boxing, they call that hitting below the belt. In Buddhism, it’s called creating agitation and imbalance—roadblocks that must be overcome if one is to find harmony between emotion and reason. At that moment, I wanted nothing more to do with my former father-in-law and Dino Birch and whoever had shot the Hollisters. I wanted to forget what I’d done in Prague. But I knew it could never be that easy. One final obligation. One last attempt at surmounting guilt.

“This massage parlor,” I said, “what’s the address?”

He gave it to me.

“And there’s one more thing,” Carlisle said. “You know who Grant Kessler is?”

“Former actor. Runs Creatures United down in Los Angeles.”

“That’s him. Well, you might be interested to know he owns a weekend house in Rancho Bonita, about a mile from the Hollisters’ place. I just found that out.”

“You’re saying Grant Kessler killed the Hollisters?”

“I’m not saying that at all. I’m just pointing out the fact that he lives close by.”

“Duly noted,” I said.

T
HE
NEON
sign in the window said “Oriental Bliss, Hot Oil, Always Open,” but there was nothing blissful about the mini mall where the massage parlor was located on Rancho Bonita’s industrial west end. Across the street from Home Depot and next door to an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant, Oriental Bliss was the last place I would’ve wanted to get naked and have somebody rub hot oil all over my body. My aversion was only reinforced after I entered.

The reception area was the size of a jail cell. The walls were decorated with photographs of Hong Kong. Cheesy flute music intended to be soothing wafted from a speaker hanging precariously from the ceiling. There were three white plastic lawn chairs for waiting customers. A middle-aged guy in a Jiffy Lube uniform slumped in the middle chair, looking down at his phone. He glanced up at me, then quickly, uncomfortably, looked back down.

“Here for a massage?” the woman sitting behind a reception counter asked me.

“Are you the manager?”

“Why? Is there a problem?”

She was high mileage and wore plenty of mascara. The only thing Asian about her was the cheap print sarong into which she’d somehow managed to squeeze. The rest of her, ethnically speaking, appeared to be straight from south of the border.

“No problem,” I said. “I’d just like to speak with the manager.”

The receptionist looked at me dubiously. “And you are . . . ?”

“A friend of a friend.”

Tottering awkwardly on platform heels, she got up and unlocked a side door marked “Private,” using a key attached to a pink scrunchie she kept around her wrist.

“Wait here,” she said and disappeared inside.

The Jiffy Lube guy exhaled and shifted anxiously in his chair, still staring at his phone.

“How ’bout those Dodgers?” I said.

He pretended like I wasn’t there.

The door opened. The receptionist reemerged. She told the Jiffy Lube guy that “Chantelle” would be ready to see him shortly and told me to come on back. I followed her down a hallway with stained beige carpet flanked by other doors. One of the doors was open, revealing a tiny room barely big enough to accommodate a massage table and a rickety, freestanding plastic shelf overloaded with bottles of oil and lotion. A shiny silver dome about the size of half an orange, obscuring a hidden video camera, was mounted on the ceiling. Behind one of the closed doors, I heard muffled, carnal-like moaning.

“Somebody must really be getting into that massage,” I said.

“
Puerco
,” the receptionist muttered under her breath— Mexican Spanish for pig—loud enough for me to hear.

At the end of the hall was yet another door, partially open. This one was also marked, “Private.” The receptionist knocked and walked in ahead of me.