Hot Start (23 page)

The idea, she explained, was Roy Hollister’s, an offshoot of his struggling safari business. Many hunters were interested only in trophy heads they could hang on their walls. Hollister came up with a system by which game animals would be butchered like cattle and flown illicitly to California in the luggage compartment of his jet before being carved into individual and family-size servings. The meat would then be sold to gourmands with a taste for the exotic and to a handful of upscale restaurants in Los Angeles and San Francisco that offered special customers special entrees—dishes that never appeared on their regular menus.

“Roy didn’t pay Pete hardly anything when he was flying for him,” Peyton said, washing off her dish in the sink, “and it got to the point that Pete wasn’t doing hardly any flying. Roy was flying himself. So the meat was like a bonus? With me pregnant and working only part-time, we had to find a way to pay the bills, you know?”

I nodded.

“You sure you don’t want a sandwich?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

The image she painted of a young pilot and his wife struggling financially didn’t square with the pricey new sports car I’d seen McManus driving. I asked her about the car.

“That was Pete’s deal,” she said, drying the plate with a dish towel. “He told me Toni loaned him that Beemer until we could get back on our feet. Apparently I must not have understood the terms of the ‘loan.’ Christ, she didn’t loan him that car. She bought it for him. The same way a rich old man buys his girlfriend a diamond bracelet. She bought him a rifle too.”

“What kind of rifle?”

“I don’t know. A hunting rifle. Made out of some fancy wood.”

The kitchen adjoined the living room. Above a red brick veneer fireplace hung the stuffed trophy head of a pronghorn antelope. I could’ve sworn it was looking straight at me.

“Does Pete hunt?”

“Pete?” Peyton snorted. “Are you kidding? Pete loves to hunt. He grew up hunting. Roy took him to Africa a couple years ago with a bunch of his big-deal clients. The highlight of Pete’s life. I think he shot a deer or something. That’s where he is now—after I told him to pack his bags.”

“Pete’s in Africa?”

She looked at me funny, her left hand cradling her baby belly. “Up north, like I said. His dad has a cabin outside Frazier Park, in Pine Mountain Club. They used to go hunting up there all the time before he died.”

“Can you show me where Pete keeps his guns?”

“Why would I want to do that? I don’t even know you.”

“Somebody took a couple of shots at me last night.”

“And you think it was
Pete?
He may be a cheating piece of scum, but I find that a little hard to believe.”

The Buddha would have us trust everyone. My military mind knew better. A couple had been murdered and I, however willingly, had been sucked into the vortex of their violent deaths. Pete McManus had worked for the Hollisters. He knew I’d been asking questions about them. Did he have something to hide, something to fear that had compelled him to come after me? I didn’t know, but from where I sat, under the gaze of an antelope whose life he had stolen, everyone was suspect, including him.

“You think he shot Toni and Roy.”

I glanced back at Peyton McManus. Her expression was one of stunned disbelief and horror.

“I’m not saying he did or he didn’t. I’d still like to see his guns though.”

She led me down a short hall to their bedroom. The room was maybe ten feet square, if that, with lace curtains, a pressboard Ikea dresser, and matching nightstands. An older TV sat on the dresser. A hand-stitched quilt covered the bed. The closet had two sliding doors.

“I always have to be careful opening these,” Peyton said, clutching one of the doors with both hands. “Stupid things always come off, right on your foot. One more project he said he would get to but never did.”

“Allow me, please.”

She stepped aside as I manhandled the door, sliding it from left to right. As advertised, the stupid thing came off its track and landed on my toes.

“You OK?”

“Fine.” Bruised but otherwise intact, I set the door aside.

Peyton pushed a bunch of long dresses on hangers to the other side of the closet and began extracting firearms. Among the cache were two shotguns—a 12-gauge Remington pump-action, and a Mossberg .410 with a pistol grip—along with three rifles: an old lever-action Winchester .30-30; a Marlin bolt-action .223; and a .22-caliber Henry survival rifle with a collapsible barrel like the one I often packed in my cockpit when I was in the air force.

“Pretty sure that’s all of them,” Peyton said.

“He didn’t take any with him when he left?

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“You mean you can’t tell me, or you won’t?”

“I mean I wasn’t here when he left. I was at my mom’s. Pete’s into guns. I’m not. We used to argue over that. We used to argue over a lot of stuff.”

“Does he own any pistols or revolvers?”

“Not that I ever saw. His dad may have had some up at the house in Pine Mountain Club.”

She wrote down the address of the cabin without me having to pry it out of her.

“That’s the last of it,” she said, “just so you know.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant.

“The meat,” Peyton said. “There’s no more after this batch. I’m not sure where the rent money comes from after that. Gotta pay the hospital to deliver this baby and hire a divorce attorney. Who knows how much those guys charge in fees.”

“A lot,” I said. “I won’t tell anybody about the meat.”

“Some people think it’s gross. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’ll work out.”

She walked me to the front door. “Do me a favor,” she said, “if you do happen to run into him, tell him he’s got a week to get his shit out of here or it’s all going to the dump.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Caliber-wise, none of the rifles Peyton McManus had pulled from the closet matched the one used to kill the Hollisters. The possibility certainly existed that her husband owned others. I presumed I’d find that out after I found him.

I presumed correctly.

NINETEEN

E
ven had the
Ruptured Duck
been airworthy, I still would have had to drive to Pine Mountain Club. The nearest airport was in Kern County, in Taft, sixty-plus miles away.

I filled up my truck at an AM-PM and bought two shriveled hotdogs while I was there. They tasted like they’d been cooked for a couple of years. Then I drove home to make sure Kiddiot had food. He was snoozing on top of the refrigerator.

“I hope to be back later tonight,” I said, scratching him behind the ears.

He jerked his head away as if to say, “Stop touching me.”

A houseplant would have been more affectionate.

If I’d learned anything visiting with Pete McManus’s wife, it was that Pete was into guns. Somebody like that, you don’t drop in unannounced, especially unarmed. I grabbed my .357 and stashed it under the front seat of my truck, then cruised over to the hospital to check on Mrs. Schmulowitz on my way out of town.

Nurse Rosa Uribe was behind the front desk at the cardiac intensive care unit, doing paperwork.

“Your favorite consulting cardiologist has returned,” I said.

“She’s gone,” Uribe said without looking up and without a trace of compassion.

My mouth went instantly dry. “Say again?”

“I said she’s gone. She’s no longer here.”

Finding words to describe the anguish that washed over me at that moment would be impossible. I’ve lost friends in combat. This was worse. Mrs. Schmulowitz was gone. My chest tightened. Who would I watch
Monday Night Football
with? Who would cook me brisket?

“When did she pass?” I managed to ask.

“What’re you talking about?”

“You said Mrs. Schmulowitz was gone.”

Nurse Uribe looked up at me and her face softened. “Oh, honey, I’m
so
sorry,” she said, taking my hand. “I didn’t mean it like that. Your friend was transferred this morning to a regular room. She’s actually doing much better.”

I wanted to hug and decapitate the nurse at the same time. I wiped my eyes instead.

“What room is she in?”

Rosa Uribe looked it up on her computer.

A
PHLEBOTOMiST
wearing pink scrubs and big gold-hooped earrings was bent at the waist, poking a needle into my landlady’s outstretched right arm. She was having trouble finding a good vein.

“Vampires have fewer demands,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “What is it with you people?”

“Finally,” the phlebotomist said, blowing a strand of brown hair out of her face and watching a glass vial slowly fill with blood the color of burgundy wine.

“She’s just doing her job, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” I said.

“A job? This is not a job,
bubeleh
. This is a Bella Lugosi movie.”

“I am so sorry,” the phlebotomist said. “You have exceptionally thin veins.”

“You bet I do, honey, so I exercise and watch what I eat. People in America, they don’t exercise and boy, do they eat. Only in America does a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance. When do I get outta here? Can somebody please answer me that?”

I assured her the hospital would keep her no longer than was necessary. She was hardly placated.

“Where’s my corned beef on rye?” she demanded. “You said you were gonna bring me one, remember?”

“I remember, Mrs. Schmulowitz, but I just don’t think corned beef is a good idea right now.”

“Be that way.” She sighed. “Don’t mind me. I’ll just lie here and starve to death.”

“All done,” the phlebotomist said, applying a Band-Aid. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Yeah,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, “if you’re a voodoo doll.”

I waited until we were alone and tried to tell her how relieved I was that she wasn’t pushing daisies and would soon be coming home, but the words caught in my throat.

“C’mere, bubby,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, motioning me closer.

I leaned in, over her bed. She reached up and kissed my forehead.

“Go. I’m sure you got places to be. Stop worrying. I’ll survive.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

“Good. Now, get outta here. Just don’t come back without that sandwich if you know what’s good for you. If I have to eat any more orange Jell-O, I swear I’m gonna get all Al Pacino on these people. Always yelling, that man, every movie.”

“You’ll have that sandwich, Mrs. Schmulowitz. I promise.”

I
T
’
S
NOT
easy getting from Rancho Bonita to Pine Mountain Club, an hour north of Los Angeles in the Los Padres National Forest. You have to backtrack south on the 101 to Ventura, then cut east on Highway 126, then north, up the concrete, trash-strewn wasteland that is the Golden State Freeway, before turning back west onto Frazier Mountain Park Road. A circuitous, roughly two-hour route, only to find yourself in the middle of nowhere.

Not that Pine Mountain Club is a dump. It’s actually a pleasant place, a loose confederation of several hundred rustic homes nestled amid evergreens in a deep valley directly astride the mighty San Andreas Fault. A location as picturesque and as potentially cataclysmic as any you’ll find in Southern California.

The address on Sequoia Way that Pete McManus’s wife had provided me matched an attractive, two-story log home with three dormer windows and a wraparound porch. No cars or trucks were parked in front or nearby, and there was no garage. I waited in my truck for approximately fifteen minutes without observing any movement. Most of the curtains were open. Maybe McManus was taking a nap. I decided to go find out.

I snugged the .357 into my belt, under my shirt, got out, and began walking toward the cabin. For a long time after leaving Alpha, I felt naked without a weapon on my person. I was glad to be carrying the revolver. I hoped it wouldn’t be needed.

A mud-strewn pair of men’s hiking boots leaned against an antique rocking chair on the porch. I peered in through the glass insert of the front door. Inside the living room, a moose head and a trophy cutthroat trout hung on knotty pine walls, each a testament to the art of taxidermy. On a side table inside the entryway, I could see a stack of unopened mail and the folded front page of a newspaper, the
Mountain Enterprise.
“Fire Destroys Motor Home,” was the lead headline. Below that was the date the paper had gone to press. The date was Friday. Today was Friday. Somebody was home, or had been recently.

I knocked and stood aside. No use catching a shotgun blast in the gut when you don’t have to. Call me paranoid, but you can never anticipate how some people will react if they fear they’re being hunted.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Pete, you in there?”

No answer.

My stomach reminded me that the only thing I’d had to eat all day were those two overcooked hotdogs. I drove a half-mile down the hill to what passed for the tiny central business district of Pine Mountain Club, a block of mostly gift shops and real estate offices. There was a bakery, but it was closed. Nearby was a Mexican restaurant, Casa Roberto’s, with seven tables, all of them unoccupied. The neon sign in the window said, “Open.”

The dearth of customers should’ve been my first clue that Casa Roberto’s was hardly a bastion of haute cuisine. The chicken enchiladas I ordered, awash in grease and a pale yellow soup that passed for cheese sauce, affirmed that reality. As a child, your parents teach you not to waste food, but my guess is that your parents never ate at Casa Roberto’s. A couple of bites and I was done.

I drove back up and parked down the hill from the cabin on Sequoia Way, far enough away not to be seen, yet close enough to see that there was still no vehicle out front. I reclined my seatback and waited.

A handful of SUVs and pickups drove past over the next half hour or so. None of their drivers or passengers so much as looked my way. A chubby adolescent riding a dirt bike with high fenders, no muffler, and a tinny, two-stroke engine slowed long enough to glance over before bombing up the hill. A minute later, he was back. I rolled down my window. He raised the visor of his Darth Vader helmet. He had braces on his teeth and rolls of fat under a sleeveless white T-shirt.