Flat Spin

by David Freed

  He earned a business degree from San Francisco State. Like hell. The only college Echevarria ever graduated from was what we in Alpha jokingly referred to as the “University of Direct Action.” Like the rest of us, he’d earned a bachelor’s in close quarters battle and a PhD in “Look at Me so Much as Sideways and I Will Fucking Blow Your Shit Away.”

  He’d built a successful international trading company. The trading company was little more than a mail drop in a three-story Art Deco office building on Geary Street with gilded styling and a terra cotta exterior, a half-mile west of downtown San Francisco. An outsourced answering service in New Delhi fielded incoming telephone traffic. The operators were instructed to say that Mr. Echevarria was “in a sales meeting” and to take a message whenever anyone called.

  “He is survived by his loving and devoted wife and soul mate, Savannah . . . Spare me. To have a soul mate, one first needs a soul. Arlo Echevarria had no soul as far as I was concerned, not after wrecking my marriage. There were times, sure, when I stepped on my own meat in the course of the marriage, but that didn’t give him the right to leave his wife and take mine, even if mine ultimately chose to go willingly. As a fellow operator, Echevarria should’ve kept his hands off my wife in the same way I kept my hands off his. Not that I was even for a moment attracted to his wife. The Janice Echevarria I remembered from the few times I’d met her was a foul-mouth she-devil with too much mascara and too little regard for her husband’s welfare beyond how much money he brought home. Under the circumstances, I suppose I couldn’t much blame Echevarria for having made a play for Savannah. Then again, maybe I could.

  I folded Echevarria’s death notice and returned it to the belly drawer of my desk. I thought about what Miles Zambelli had told me in the limo driving in from North Vegas, how Janice Echevarria, Arlo’s first wife, had abundant reasons for wanting him dead. The planet is thick with divorced people who secretly wish such ill on their former spouses. Very few, fortunately, ever attempt to carry out those fantasies.

  My office phone rang. It was Lamont Royale, calling from a very loud casino. He said he had hoped to talk to me in confidence while I was still in Las Vegas, but that would’ve been impossible. Carlisle, he said, planted listening devices everywhere, including all of his automobiles.

  “I have some . . . on . . . Mr.—” Lamont said.

  I could barely hear him above the din of carnival music and the metallic clink-clink-clink of slot machines paying out.

  “Say again?”

  He repeated himself, only louder and slower. “I have some information on Mr. Echevarria’s murder.”

  Something thudded heavily just then against the concrete floor to my left, caromed off my trash can, and came to rest near my feet. I looked down: the object resembled the kind of cardboard roll toilet paper comes on, only metal and painted olive drab, with a big metal cap on each end. A stun grenade.

  “Five-banger,” I thought to myself.

  BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

  A succession of deafening but otherwise harmless explosions meant to shock, not kill, rocked the hangar, as helmeted SWAT officers in green Nomex flight suits from the Rancho Bonita PD came swarming in with short-barrel shotguns and MP-9 submachine guns. They were yelling “On the ground!” and “Get on the ground!” and “Lemme see your hands!” and it looked like they couldn’t wait to put a bullet in somebody, anybody. I sat with my hands folded placidly on my desk so that somebody wouldn’t be me. Two seconds later, I was kissing the concrete, gun barrels jammed against my head, knees against my back, while my arms were yanked painfully behind me and my wrists handcuffed. I noticed there were many dust bunnies under my desk and a ballpoint pen I’d been hunting for more than a month. I remember thinking to myself, I really do need to do some cleaning around here.

  The police yelled, “Clear!” and two SWAT officers hoisted me up off the floor by my armpits. A third frisked me, a big, jarheadlooking dude with freckles.

  “I’d offer you coffee,” I said to the lawmen, “but, one, I don’t have any, and, two, you guys look like you’re already way over-caffeinated.”

  It wasn’t hard to find the two-inch revolver stuck in my belt. Freckles handed the weapon to his sergeant, then finished patting me down.

  “He’s clean,” Freckles said. The officers who’d hoisted me off the floor slammed me back down into my desk chair.

  Czarnek and Windhauser strolled in as if on cue.

  “Five-banger,” I said to the detectives. “A little overkill, don’t you think?”

  Windhauser propped his ass on the corner of my desk, planted a cowboy-booted foot up on my chair, and squinted hard at me, arms folded, while Czarnek read me my Miranda rights from a little laminated card. I told them I understood my rights. I was happy to talk. The entertainment value alone would make the conversation more than worthwhile.

  Windhauser smoothed the ends of his Wyatt Earp moustache with his thumb and index finger and said, “We know you killed him, Logan.”

  “Killed who?”

  “You know who.”

  “You play games with us, Mr. Logan,” Czarnek said, working his Nicorette, “and I guarantee you, it’s gonna go a lot harder on you than you can ever possibly imagine.”

  They had on the same winter-weight wool sport coats they wore the last time I’d seen them. Same color shirts. Same ties.

  “Dragnet called,” I said. “They’d like their wardrobe back.”

  Windhauser grunted.

  “We spoke to your ex-wife,” Czarnek said. “She confirmed you were quite upset with Mr. Echevarria as far as the two of them getting, you know, romantically involved.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  The two detectives looked at each other. This was starting out better than they’d planned.

  “So, you’re saying you did do him?” Windhauser said.

  “I’m saying I was upset. I didn’t say I killed him—not that I didn’t frequently consider it.”

  Another look between them.

  “Lemme spell it out for you,” Windhauser said. “We got a warrant to search for the murder weapon. So we’re gonna toss this place—I mean, rip it the fuck up. We don’t find the weapon here, we’re gonna toss your apartment cuz we got a warrant for it, too, OK? And if we don’t find it there, we’re gonna rip up your airplane. Then we’re gonna rip up your truck. We don’t find the gun by then, we’re gonna come back and start all over again. So why don’t you just do yourself and everybody else a favor and tell us where it’s at.”

  “You guys need some new threads,” I said. “I mean, tweed is so three years ago.”

  Windhauser exhaled. He got up, took a couple of steps toward the door, then turned and pointed a finger at me. “You think you’re so fucking smart. Lemme tell you something, chuck wagon, this is gonna go south on you in a hurry unless you start singing another tune.”

  “Did you just call me chuck wagon?”

  The SWAT sergeant stepped in. “We found this on him,” he said, showing Windhauser my little revolver. “Bad boy was fully loaded.”

  Freckles and his sergeant shared a celebratory fist bump. The murder weapon had been recovered. Case closed.

  “It’s Miller time,” Freckles said.

  Windhauser stared up at the ceiling and rubbed the vein in his forehead.

  “Maybe if you morons had bothered to read the warrant, you’d know the weapon is a .40-cal semi-auto, not some fucking wheel gun! I don’t even know why we even bothered calling you people in to assist. I mean, Jesus Christ!” He shouldered past Freckles and out of the hangar.

  The Rancho Bonita sergeant looked forlorn enough at having been put in his place by the big city detective that for a moment I thought he might start crying. He handed my revolver to Czarnek who tucked it in his sport coat, dug a fresh toothpick out of the breast pocket of his shirt and began picking his teeth.

  “We checked with your landlady,” he said. “She confirmed you and her have dinner Monday nights during f
ootball season. Only she has no specific recollection of the night Echevarria was killed.”

  “We had pot roast with carrots and potatoes. The gravy was excellent. No lumps.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure it was delicious but, see, here’s the deal: if the old lady can’t remember eating with you that night, and you got no other alibi, then we got no choice but to start looking for that semi-auto. Unless you want to tell us where it is.”

  “Look in the desk.”

  Czarnek cocked his head and his eyebrow, intrigued. “It can’t be that easy.” He pulled open a side drawer and started tearing through it like a kid opening a present on Christmas Day.

  “Belly drawer,” I said.

  He shut the drawer he was rummaging through and opened the one I’d told him to check. Inside were mostly aircraft maintenance records and FAA paperwork. Czarnek found the photo of Echevarria and me, posing with the dead Arab.

  “Your ex-wife showed us this picture,” he said. “You Photoshop this?”

  “Photoshop. Right. I’m still trying to figure out how to retrieve email.”

  Czarnek set the picture aside and dug deeper through the drawer.

  “No gun,” he said when he was finished.

  “Never said there was a gun.”

  “Then what the hell was I just looking for?”

  “Receipt.”

  “A receipt?”

  “One pint of vanilla ice cream, one frozen apple pie, and, if I recall correctly, six cans of Fancy Feast cat food.”

  Czarnek spit his gum into my trash can. “OK,” he said. “I’ll bite.”

  “Mrs. Schmulowitz forgot dessert that night,” I said. “She sent me out at halftime—which, according to your records, would’ve been just about when Echevarria got shot. I walked over to the Portola Street Market, a couple blocks from my apartment. Owner’s name is Kang. Good guy, except he’s an Oakland Raider fan. Kang’ll remember me being there that night. He remembers everything.”

  Czarnek looked at me questioningly, then went back through the belly drawer to find the computerized cash register receipt. The date and time stamp confirmed that I’d made my purchase within five minutes of when Echevarria’s neighbors began calling 911 to report gunshots.

  “Without traffic, Echevarria’s house is a good hour and a half drive from Rancho Bonita,” I said. “Even if I’d flown there that night, I would’ve had to land at Van Nuys, then rent a car or take a taxi. There’s no way I could’ve been there and at Kang’s market within a span of five minutes. Unless, of course, I was Carlos Castaneda.”

  “Who’s Carlos Castaneda?”

  “The whole Mesoamerican, shamanism thing, being in two places at once?”

  Czarnek gazed at me blankly.

  “Forget it,” I said.

  He conceded that there was no way any prosecutor would ever file murder charges against me, not with the receipt he had in his hand, and not after Kang, the owner of the market, vouched for my whereabouts that night.

  “I do find it a little strange, you keeping receipts from the corner grocery store,” Czarnek said.

  “My landlady’s thinking of taking flying lessons. As a prospective student, the pie and ice cream are legitimate business expenses.”

  Czarnek glanced at the receipt. “What about the cat food?”

  “Cat’s narcoleptic, not to mention the fact he has the IQ of a houseplant. I’m fairly confident the FAA would never issue him a pilot’s license.”

  Czarnek probably would’ve laughed if the LAPD didn’t have an image to maintain. He tucked the receipt back in the belly drawer of my desk. Then he unhooked the cuffs.

  Windhauser wasn’t happy about his partner wanting to cut me loose. He theorized that I could’ve cooked up a cover story by having somebody go to Kang’s market and get a time-stamped receipt for me, while I was really down in LA, murdering Echevarria. Windhauser even insisted that Czarnek drive us over to the Portola Street Market so that he could personally question Kang. I waited unobserved in the backseat of the detectives’ Crown Vic, the windows rolled down, and enjoyed the show.

  Kang stood behind his cash register, arms folded, answering Windhauser’s questions while watching a strung-out speed freak in a hooded sweatshirt prowling the bread and donut aisle. Kang was a stout hardhead with shifting slits for eyes that missed nothing. He’d been a martial arts instructor in the South Korean Army. No would-be shoplifter ever made it out the door at Kang’s market on Portola Street in one piece. Ever.

  He told Windhauser he was “100 percent positive” he’d seen me the night of the murder.

  “Logan give me crap at halftime for being Raider fan. He funny dude. Good customer.”

  “How can you be so sure it was halftime when he came in,” Windhauser said.

  “Halftime, we talk. Game, I watch. No talking.”

  “How do I know you’re not covering for him?”

  Kang’s eye slits shifted from the meth head to Windhauser like the detective’s question was delivered in a foreign language.

  “Maybe he calls in,” Windhauser speculated. “Maybe he says, ‘Hey, Kang, old buddy, do me a favor and ring me up some pie and whatnot and I’ll be by in a couple hours to pick it up.’ You figure the request is a little weird, but what the hell? The guy’s a good customer. Isn’t that what you just told me?”

  “He buy ice cream and want me to put it under counter? Ice cream melt under counter.”

  “The freezer. Whatever. I’m just saying.”

  Kang shifted his eye slits back to the druggie, who was getting a little too intimate with a twelve-pack of Ding Dongs.

  “You gonna buy those or have-a-sex with them?”

  The tweaker looked over at the no-nonsense Korean shopkeeper and the no-nonsense bulge under Windhauser’s sport coat, and wisely returned the Ding Dongs to the shelf.

  “Ice cream in a bag, under a-da counter,” Kang said to Windhauser, still watching the crank head. “You fuckin’ crazy, man.”

  “Look,” Windhauser said, “you need to understand something here, chief. We’re conducting a homicide investigation. Let me repeat that: a homicide investigation, OK? I find out you’re providing false and misleading information, you’re on the first sampan back to Peking.”

  Kang slowly shifted both eye slits back toward Windhauser like the battleship Missouri bringing all guns to bear.

  “I’m Korean-American,” he said. “Now get the fuck out of my store, chief.”

  The detectives drove me the two blocks home. Windhauser said he still harbored suspicions, but conceded that there was no evidence to keep me in custody. Czarnek said he hoped there were no hard feelings and shook my hand. I offered to take them both sightseeing in my airplane. Forgive and forget, I always say. Well, maybe not always. Czarnek said he’d definitely think about it and gave me my gun back. Windhauser said nothing.

  I returned Lamont Royale’s call the next morning and got his voice mail. If he had any insights as to who killed Echevarria, I told him, I was all ears. My next call was to Detective Czarnek. I asked him to fax me a copy of Echevarria’s autopsy report.

  “I can’t do that,” Czarnek said.

  “Sure you can. All you do is put some paper in the machine and hit send.”

  “I’d have to clear it with my supervisor, and I don’t think he’d go for it.”

  “I’m trying to help you, Detective.”

  Czarnek exhaled. “I know.”

  Kiddiot sat in front of his cat door and looked at it like he’d never seen it before, yowling mournfully to be let out. No use arguing with an animal that dumb. I opened the people door. He sauntered past my feet and into the backyard like he was the one doing me a big favor.

  I asked Czarnek if the LAPD had any other suspects in the case. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice.

  “You were it,” he said.

  I could hear Windhauser’s voice in the background. He was bitching to someone about how much he’d been ripped off for termite repa
irs on his house.

  “How many other homicides you guys working?” I asked Czarnek.

  “I don’t even fucking know at this point,” the detective said. “Gangs are keeping us crazy busy right now. Big turf war going on. Pacoima Flats and Paxton Street Locos. Little punks. I’d like to take a bazooka to all of ’em.”

  “I know a couple of places where you could pick one up cheap.”

  “That story you rattled off at lunch the other day,” Czarnek said, “about you and Echevarria doing the Lord’s work. That true?”

  “Well, if it wasn’t, it ought to be.”

  There was a pause like he was thinking about it. Then he said, “Gimme your fax number.”

  I had no fax number. Mainly because I had no fax machine. Couldn’t afford one. I gave Czarnek the number to Larry’s machine in the hangar instead.

  Larry’s fax machine was broken. Something about the feeder mechanism. Every incoming page looked like it had gone through an accordion, then splotched black. Larry said he’d been intending to get the piece of crap fixed but lacked the necessary funds. Now that I’d finally paid him what I owed him in back rent, he could send it out for repair.

  “I’ll get to it next week,” he said, bent over his workbench, tinkering with a troublesome magneto.

  I called Czarnek back, told him my machine was on the fritz, and gave him the number for my “other fax.” I didn’t tell him I happened to share it with Kinko’s.

  The seven-page report was waiting for me by the time I drove downtown to the copy shop a half-hour later. Czarnek had also faxed a copy of the LAPD’s preliminary investigation of Echevarria’s homicide, including witness statements.

  “Interesting reading,” the clerk said.