by David Freed
“I always thought we had something, Logan,” Savannah said, “but after awhile, you were never around to appreciate it. You were always gone. You don’t water a flower, it dies. You stopped being there for me. Arlo was.”
“I stopped being there because Arlo sent me off on business assignments while he took care of business at home. You ever stop to think about that?”
She was quiet.
“Did you love him?”
“I suppose you could call it that.”
“Like you loved me?”
There was silence for what seemed like a long time. Then she said, “No. Not like I loved you.”
A sea green Buick Skylark pulled in beside me. An ancient old man wearing one of those white Navy “skipper” caps with gold scrambled eggs on the bill, the kind of hats sailboat owners put on when they want to look especially goofy, got out and hobbled around to open the door for his passenger, an old lady wearing an identical hat. She kissed his hand while he tenderly helped her out of the Buick. Who says there’s no such thing as eternal domestic bliss? I couldn’t help it; I sighed like a schoolgirl.
“You’ll be watching movies on Lifetime before long,” I mumbled to myself.
“Did you say something?”
“Yeah. I said I need my head examined.”
Any man with an ounce of self-respect would’ve ripped the check in half, hung up, and moved on with his life. But no man with an ounce of brains would’ve ever surrendered Savannah Carlisle as easily as I did. Maybe this was a way back to her. Even if it wasn’t, it was still twenty-five large.
“I need the number for the detectives handling the case,” I said.
“You’ll call them? Really?”
“You said you wanted me to talk to them. I’ll talk to them.”
“Oh, Logan, that’s fantastic!” The delight in Savannah’s voice was genuine. “What made you change your mind?”
I watched Methuselah and his bride hobble arm-in-arm into the bank. She was leaning her head on his shoulder.
“Just give me the number,” I said, “before I start heaving.”
The lead investigator in Echevarria’s homicide answered his phone at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire station on the first ring.
“Detective Czarnek.”
Gravelly baritone. Smoker. He sounded world-weary and badass. Somebody in the background was singing “Girl Watcher” by the O’Kaysions. I could hear others laughing. I identified myself and explained why I was calling. It took him a second to connect the dots.
“Which case was it again?”
“Arlo Echevarria.”
“Echevarria, Echevarria.” I heard a drawer slide open and the sound of files being gone through. “Echevarria, Echevarria. Oh, yeah, right. Echevarria, Arlo. And you say you’re who again?”
I repeated my name. I told him that I was calling from Rancho Bonita, but that I’d be happy to drive to Los Angeles to meet with him at his convenience, to provide whatever information I could.
“You say you’re up in Rancho Bonita?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Nice town if you can afford it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, I tell you what, Mr.—what’d you say your name was again?”
“Logan.”
“Mr. Logan, I wouldn’t mind taking a little drive up the coast and come see you. Give my partner and me an excuse to breathe some air we can’t actually see for a change.”
“OK by me.”
“There’s a little Mexican place up your way I’ve eaten at— El Grande’s,” Czarnek said. “Best tortas this side of Ensenada. I believe the city of Los Angeles can afford to spring for lunch. What’s tomorrow looking like for you?”
El Grande Taqueria is an anonymous, green and white taco shack on the working class, lower east side of Rancho Bonita, an eatery with undersized, overpriced servings and no atmosphere— unless you count the beer trucks and lowriders rumbling past outside. You order your food at one window and pick it up at another. Hardly haute cuisine, but more than a few aficionados swear by the place. Half a dozen Mexican joints on Verde Street offered tastier chow in larger portions and at lower prices. But if the good taxpayers of Los Angeles were willing to spring for lunch, who was I to play enchilada snob? Two free meals in two days. An underemployed flight instructor could get used to that kind of treatment.
“Tomorrow’s good,” I said.
“Eleven o’clock?”
“A little early for Mexican food, isn’t it?”
“We like to start early around here,” Czarnek said. “Beat the traffic that way.”
Whoever it was who was singing in the background was now joined by what sounded like at least two other male voices. The tune had changed. It was now Paul Anka’s “(You’re) Having My Baby.” A man singing about the wonderment of pregnancy. Listening to it felt like the lyrical equivalent of being water-boarded. I told Czarnek I’d see him at eleven and signed off.
After that, I went inside the bank and deposited Gil Carlisle’s check.
LAPD homicide Detective Keith Czarnek was not what I imagined over the phone. He was about fifty and built like a pear. Pink cheeks. Pudgy hands. Receding blonde hair and a high forehead that was beaded with sweat and precancerous skin lesions. Except for the faded Marine Corps eagle, globe and anchor tattooed on his left forearm, and the requisite push-broom cop moustache insulating his top lip, there was nothing badass about the man.
“I’d mainline this stuff if I could,” Czarnek said as he spooned salsa onto his torta.
“Face it,” said Czarnek’s partner, Detective John Windhauser, working on his fourth fish taco, “you’re a beaner food addict.”
We were sitting on molded white plastic chairs, around a molded plastic table. El Grande Taqueria was mobbed as usual. It was approximately 140 degrees in the shade of the restaurant’s corrugated plastic awning. I picked at a cheese enchilada that had coagulated on my plate into a formless red and yellow blob.
“So,” Windhauser said, low enough so the diners around us couldn’t hear, “Mr. Echevarria was shot almost a month ago. How is it you decide to contact us only now?”
“I only heard about it a few days ago,” I said.
Windhauser nodded a little too empathetically. He had a snowy crew cut and a cleft chin, and his face looked like Verdun, pockmarked and ravaged by the acne he’d evidently suffered as a teenager some five decades earlier. He wore pleated Dockers khakis and soft-soled black walking shoes and, like Czarnek, a short-sleeved, light-blue dress shirt. Windhauser’s tie was red paisley. Czarnek’s tie was one of those brown knit jobs with a square bottom, the kind popular back when Eisenhower was in the White House. Czarnek’s gold tie bar said “187”—California penal code for homicide. Windhauser’s tie tack was a set of tiny dangling handcuffs. Both detectives had removed their winter-weight wool sport coats and slung them over their seat backs as a concession to the merciless autumn heat. Other diners tried not to stare at the badge and Kimber .45-caliber pistol clipped to each of their belts.
“You can’t find food like this in LA. This stuff ’s authentico,” Czarnek said, mopping up chili sauce with a piece of tortilla. Drops of sweat fell from his face onto his plate.
“Got some salsa on your tie,” Windhauser advised his partner.
“Look who’s talking.”
Windhauser looked down and held up his own tie for closer inspection. “Fuck.” He dipped his paper napkin in his water glass and scrubbed the stain clean.
Neither cop seemed particularly eager to discuss Echevarria’s murder. I didn’t push it. We ate and talked mostly about flying. Windhauser boasted of having served two tours as a door gunner on a Huey in Vietnam. Czarnek confided that he got airsick riding the flying Dumbos at Disneyland. Their approach was straight from the Big Book of Standard Police Interrogation Techniques. Take your time. Build rapport. Put the interview subject at ease before you start jamming him. They smiled openly, their
torsos and feet pointed toward me. Their rate of speech, vocal tone, the size and number of their gestures, all mirrored mine. The subliminal message they were trying to send was, “We like you. You should trust us.” Both detectives were playing good cop. I wondered how long and which one would turn bad first. My money was on Windhauser. He had a tough time not narrowing his eyes when he looked at me.
“Must be nice, having your own airplane,” Czarnek said, sipping iced horchata through a straw.
“The Ruptured Duck’s a good bird—aside from the fact that something’s always breaking. That’s what happens when you get old and crotchety.”
“The Ruptured Duck. What kind of name is that?’” Windhauser asked.
“Everybody getting out of the service at the end of World War Two was supposed to wear a temporary insignia on their uniforms to let the military police know they’d been honorably discharged and weren’t AWOL. The insignia was intended to look like an eagle inside a wreath. Only everybody decided that the eagle looked more like a duck. Some wiseacre said it looked like a ‘ruptured duck.’ The name stuck.”
“So you went with it,” Czarnek said.
“I would’ve gone with Tweetie, but it was already taken.”
Czarnek smiled. Windhauser wiped his mouth, wadded his paper napkin, and tossed it on his plate. Then he sucked down some Diet Pepsi. Czarnek sniffed audibly and cleared his throat. The prearranged signal. Time to get down to police business.
“So, Mr. Logan,” Windhauser said, “you say you knew Mr. Echevarria how?”
“We hunted terrorists together and usually killed them.”
The two LAPD detectives glanced at each other, then at me.
“You wanna run that one by us again?” Czarnek said.
I told them how Echevarria and I had been assigned to a top-secret team of government assassins tasked in the wake of September 11th with terminating individuals across the globe who had been deemed threats to the homeland. I even used the term, “extreme prejudice.” I explained how our rules of engagement dictated that there were no rules of engagement. I told them how we operated with clear understanding that if any of us were ever captured by hostile forces, the Secretary truly would disavow any knowledge of our activities. I explained that there was no shortage of evil people around the globe who would’ve loved to murder Echevarria, but that they were all on the run, or hunkered down overseas in remote rat holes like the tribal belt between Pakistan and Afghanistan, pursued relentlessly by counterterrorist forces and unable to take a decent dump in peace, let alone locate and murder a retired go-to guy living in anonymous obscurity in the San Fernando Valley. Yes, I told the two LAPD detectives, I knew it all sounded like so much made-up Hollywood, Mission Impossible guano, but there it was. The straight poop on Arlo Echevarria. They could do with the information as they wished, I said. I didn’t care one way or the other.
Czarnek and Windhauser studied me. They looked at each other. Then they both started laughing.
“Oh, man,” Czarnek said, dabbing at the corners of his eyes, “that is some wicked good shit.”
“Extreme prejudice,” Windhauser said, mimicking me between spasms. “Christ.”
They had responded in the very manner I had anticipated, with disbelief. Everybody lies to the police. Cops hear crazy crap all the time from people they’re sworn to protect as well as those they get paid to arrest: the CIA planted a chip in my head and is controlling my thoughts; Martians are living in my attic; the devil made me do it. But the “I Was a Paid Assassin for the Government” spiel, that was a new one.
Windhauser’s laughter tapered to a cold smile. He fixed me with an iron stare meant to intimidate. “Some little hottie down at the beach you’re trying to hit on, she might fall for that crock of shit. But you’re not talking to her now, are you?”
“Could be little hotties down at the beach aren’t necessarily my cup of tea if you get my drift, Detective, and I think you do.” I winked at him provocatively.
Windhauser’s smile departed altogether.
“If you think I’m gay,” he said, “you’re mistaken.”
“Nothing wrong with being gay,” I said. “Plenty of people are gay. They come out of the closet all the time. Even homicide cops.”
Windhauser gripped the arms of his chair, his blood pressure twenty points higher than it was a minute before. He looked over at his partner and said, “Who the fuck does this asshole think he is?”
Czarnek unwrapped a piece of Nicorette White Ice Mint gum, watching me.
“We just want the truth, Mr. Logan,” he said.
“I told you the truth.”
Windhauser said, “I can’t fucking believe we drove all the way up here to talk to this lying lump of shit.”
“Be honest, Detective,” I said, “you drove all the way up here for the tacos.”
Windhauser glowered. A V-shaped vein rose in the middle of his forehead and throbbed noticeably.
“We talked to Mr. Echevarria’s wife,” Czarnek said. “She told us he worked for the federal government. But we can’t find any record of that.”
“You won’t. Our operations were classified.”
Windhauser got to his feet suddenly, like he wanted to lay hands on me. His plastic chair clattered onto its side. Other diners paused and looked over to see what the commotion was about. The restaurant fell silent.
“C’mon, partner, let’s get out of here,” Windhauser said, grabbing his jacket off the floor. “This guy’s fucking nuts.”
Czarnek stayed put, eyeing me. “Mrs. Echevarria told us she used to be your wife.”
“She was. I never knew what true happiness was until we got married. Then it was too late.”
“Why’d you break up, you don’t mind me asking?”
“She dumped me.”
“Why?” Windhauser demanded
“Because she fell in love with Echevarria.”
Czarnek stopped chewing his gum. The detectives traded another look. Windhauser righted his chair and lowered himself into it.
“How exactly would you describe your relationship with your ex-wife?” Windhauser said.
“Strained.”
“What about with Mr. Echevarria?” Czarnek said. “What kind of relationship did you have with him?”
“We had no relationship. Not after what he did to me.”
“So, what you’re saying is, the two of you stopped being friends after your wife left you for him. Is that what you’re saying?”
I didn’t say anything. I could see where this was going. Czarnek reached into the breast pocket of his sport coat and got out a reporter’s notebook. He flipped through the narrow pages to find where he’d jotted down the date of Echevarria’s murder— October 24th. He asked me if I remembered what I was doing that night.
“It was a Monday,” Czarnek added.
“I would’ve been watching football.”
“By yourself?”
“With my landlady.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“She makes me dinner every Monday night during football season. We always watch the game together.”
“You two ever get it on?” Windhauser said. “Maybe at halftime?”
Another tactic from the Big Book of Standard Police Interrogation Techniques: Bad Cop periodically lets fly an outrageous accusation intended to infuriate the suspect who comes unglued and, in his unbridled anger, blurts the truth of his crime.
“My landlady is in her eighties,” I said. “She only goes for old guys, Detective Windhauser. Like you.”
Windhauser glared. His partner stifled a smile.
“You pretty sure she can vouch for your whereabouts that evening?” Czarnek asked.
“You’ll have to ask her that.”
“We intend to,” Windhauser said.
The detectives were staring at me in a new light, a light that told me even though I was the one who’d called them, I was now suspect numero uno in the homicide of Arlo Echevarria.
SIX
Inside the walled fortress that is America’s intelligence community, analysts are trained to scientifically consider all possible explanations when trying to determine who bombed the jetliner or blew up the office tower. Unfortunately, intelligence analysts are human. Like all humans, they quickly form opinions as to guilt or innocence, then instinctively pursue the evidence that will buttress their preconceived beliefs. Evidence that conflicts with those preconceptions is commonly disregarded. Which is why we sometimes end up invading the wrong country.
Professionals in other occupations are no different. A patient complains of a stomachache. His doctor concludes that the patient must have indigestion or an ulcer because the last five patients he treated with similar symptoms had indigestion or an ulcer. The patient is sent home with antibiotics or a bottle of Tums and dies that night from a burst appendix. Two LAPD homicide detectives conclude that an ex-husband murdered the man his wife left him for because the detectives have investigated dozens of murders over the years and it is always the ex-husband or former boyfriend who did it.
Still, I walked out of El Grande Taqueria that day a free man. No handcuffs. No threats of, “We’re going to have to take you down to the station for further questioning.” Czarnek thanked me for agreeing to meet with them. He asked me if I would be willing to take a polygraph test at some point in the near future. I said I wouldn’t mind at all. He said they’d be in touch and urged me to have a nice day, while Windhauser said nothing. I could tell by the way they watched me as I got in my truck, parked two spaces down from their unmarked Crown Vic, that it wouldn’t matter whether I passed a lie-detector test or not. They’d already made up their minds about who murdered Arlo Echevarria. Like intelligence analysts, now all they had to do was make the pieces fit their puzzle.
I waited for a break in the traffic, then burned an illegal U-turn across three lanes of traffic while my new friends from the LAPD watched. I tossed them a casual wave and motored south on Verde Street, feeling a sense of relief. I’d done what my ex-wife wanted me to do, done what my ex-father-in-law had paid me to do. I’d told the police what I knew about the real Arlo Echevarria. If they didn’t want to hear it, that was their problem. As far as I was concerned, I had fulfilled my end of the deal. I may still have been curious about who murdered Echevarria, but not so curious that I was willing to become more involved than I already was. Goddamn Savannah. I couldn’t decide which I regretted more, cashing her father’s check or not having been born rich.