by David Freed
OTHER TITLES BY DAVID FREED
Flat Spin
Fangs Out
Voodoo Ridge
Copyright © 2015 by David Freed
All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.
For information, address:
The Permanent Press
4170 Noyac Road
Sag Harbor, NY 11963
www.thepermanentpress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freed, David—
The three nine line / by David Freed.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-1-57962-399-9
eISBN 978-1-57962-424-8
1. Logan, Cordell (Fictitious character) I. Title.
PS3606.R4375T48 2015
813'.6—dc232015013683
Printed in the United States of America
For Lisa
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have come to pass without the support of many kind and generous people on two continents.
My thanks in particular to retired Air Force Brigadier General Dan Cherry for introducing me to former North Vietnamese fighter pilot Nguyen Hong My, whose MiG-21 Cherry shot down after a prolonged dogfight in 1972 over North Vietnam. Though badly injured, Hong My would survive their air battle and years later become good buddies with Cherry. Believing that any friend of Dan’s is a friend of his, Hong My happily piloted me all over Hanoi on the back of his motorbike, taking me to wonderful restaurants, beer halls and museums that I might’ve missed otherwise. It was with Hong My that I toured the infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” where United States prisoners of war were housed. He also introduced me to other North Vietnamese combat veterans whose vivid recollections of war proved invaluable in my work both as a novelist and journalist. I cannot express enough my appreciation for Hong My’s help. I’m also greatly indebted to his nephew, aspiring aeronautical engineer Duc Nguyen, for serving as my interpreter and stand-in chauffeur—and for making me laugh aloud at his frequent, unintentionally humorous puzzlements over modern American culture.
I would be remiss in not thanking my longtime friend and former reporting colleague from the Los Angeles Times, Scott Duke Harris, and Scott’s wife, K. Oanh Ha, Hanoi bureau chief of Bloomberg News Service, for their generous hospitality during my stay in Vietnam.
To air traffic controller Jeff Barnhart, my gratitude for helping keep me safe in the air and, in this case, in print.
Ditto that last sentiment to copy editor Barb Anderson for her sharp pencil and sage, questioning mind. Thanks also to graphics designer Lon Kirschner for his always excellent book covers; to my agent extraordinaire, Jill Marr of Dijkstra Literary, for her unwavering support; and to copublishers Marty and Judy Shepard of The Permanent Press for continuing to afford Cordell Logan and me a home. We are both ever in your debt.
To my brilliant, beautiful partner, Dr. Elizabeth Bates Freed, who truly embodies the notion that behind every good man stands a better woman, I am blessed by your tender and steadfast presence in my life. Earthbound or aloft, there is no one I’d rather have in my right seat.
“Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.”
—CHARLES DICKENS, A Tale of Two Cities
THE THREE-NINE LINE
Two widowed sisters out for their predawn stroll were the first to spot it, floating near the red wooden bridge that led to the island with its ancient temple. They thought it was the rarely seen giant turtle, the one whose sacred ancestors have lived in the lake for a thousand years. But when they made their way excitedly onto the bridge and peered over the hand railing into the dark water, what they saw was not some mythic, oversized reptile. It was a man, arms hovering buoyantly at his sides, his black sport coat humped over his back like a tortoise shell, dead.
One of the old women stayed behind while the other hobbled as best she could along the lakeshore to the police substation on Le Thai To Street, a quarter mile away. The two officers on duty were sipping tea from cloisonné cups and smoking Marlboro Lights, engrossed in a television soap opera about sixteenth century Chinese warlords. The woman told them what she’d found and implored them to come quickly. The cops said they’d be along as soon as their show was over. That was before she let it be known that her son was a ranking Party member and that he knew others, higher still. The taller of the officers grudgingly grabbed a flashlight, the other a pack of cigarettes. They drove her back in their patrol car, a Toyota Tercel with candy bar lights and a manual transmission.
The man was dead all right. The cops agreed on that much, gazing out at the body as it lapped against the bridge supports. Probably some tourist who’d drunk too much beer in the Old Quarter and accidentally fallen in, the way tourists will do sometimes. Why, the shorter cop grumbled under his breath, did the old women have to find him when they did? An hour later and they would’ve both been off duty, probably getting drunk themselves. Now here they were, their immediate futures bleak with piles of paperwork and hours of unpaid overtime. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst would be having to kiss up to those ambitious overachievers from the Department of Public Security who’d be assigned to the case, the ones who actually investigated crimes and didn’t commit them or cover them up, like the rest of the Hanoi police force. The two cops crossed the bridge onto the island. They cursed the tourist for having been stupid enough to drown on their shift. They cursed the two old biddies for having found him. Of all the lousy luck.
A wooden skiff with a square bow was roped to a stand of cattails below the temple. One of the cops climbed in. The other undid the rope, pushed off, and hauled himself aboard. There were two oars. The body wasn’t far, twenty meters, if that, but the morning was already sultry, the air heavy, and by the time they reached the man, the shirts of their forest-green police uniforms were soaked through. Sweating and swearing, they looped the rope under the floater’s armpits, then towed him back to land.
It took both cops to drag the body out of the water. The man’s left foot was clad in a black lace-up oxford made from synthetic leather. The other foot was shoeless. His slacks were gray polyester, his sport coat a blend of polyester and wool. When they rolled him over, they saw that he was wearing a white, short-sleeved dress shirt and a red necktie, loosely knotted and adorned with a single yellow star. He looked to be in his sixties. Stocky build. A full head of bristled, close-cropped hair gone gray. An Asian face, round as a moon pie. Pinned to his lapels were a dozen military decorations. Sunk hilt-deep into his sternum was a hunting knife.
“He didn’t drown,” the shorter cop said, lighting a cigarette.
His partner looked over at him for a moment as if it were the dumbest, most obvious thing anyone in law enforcement had ever said, then turned and shined his flashlight beam full on the corpse’s face: Skin drained of color. Jaw slack. Lifeless, half-hooded eyes. Lips curled in a half smile, like he was in on some inside joke.
“I know this guy,” the cop with the flashlight said. “I read about him in the paper. They called him ‘Mr. Wonderful.’ ”
His partner exhaled smoke through his nose like a dragon. “Who called him that?”
“The Americans did. Their pilots. The ones we shot down during the war.”
“Why would they call him Mr. Wonderful?”
The taller cop clicked off his flashlight and sighed, envisioning all of the work that lay ahead.
“Because he wasn’t.”
ONE
The whales were a thousand feet below us—a pair of California grays to be exact, a mother and her calf. They surfaced slowly, gracefully, the most synchroniz
ed of synchronized swimmers you’ve ever seen. Exhaled breath misted in their wakes like gossamer. An ethereal, beautiful sight.
“Thar she blows, matey,” the famous, fifty-something movie star occupying the right seat of my airplane said for the third time in the cheesiest Captain Ahab accent I’d ever heard. From the backseat, his two blonde girlfriends, both knockouts half his age, giggled like part of their job description was to humor him. “Thar she blows.”
If the guy said it one more time, I was going to have to rip out his chin implant. Okay, that’s not true. For one thing, I’m an aspiring Buddhist and Buddhists believe in nonviolence. For another, the famous movie star was paying me a fat five hundred bucks to show him and his gal pals a good time, flying them out over the Rancho Bonita coast for an hour in my aging Cessna 172, the Ruptured Duck, so they could all get their nature freak on.
“Arrgh, thar she blows.”
I ground my teeth and counted silently to five.
We were orbiting above the ocean in a tight, thirty-degree bank. The famous movie star was wearing sunglasses with gold frames and a shiny, black leather flight jacket with the collar up, an aging James Dean. “Lower,” he said, bringing the boom mike on his headset closer to his mouth. “We need to get down there so my goddesses can get a better look. They dig getting in close, if you get my drift.”
He jabbed me playfully in the shoulder like we were buddies, in on some manly man joke.
“If we go any lower,” I explained as evenly as I could, “our whale friends down there’ll start getting nervous. As animal lovers, I’m sure we can all appreciate how we wouldn’t want to upset them. Also, when we’re this far offshore, it’s really a good idea to maintain as much altitude as we can so that if we have engine issues, we can glide in and not have to worry about swimming to shore.”
“The engine sounds fine to me,” the famous movie star said. “Look, if this is about the money, I got plenty.” He pulled out a fat flash roll from his jeans and held it up so his playthings in the backseat could see it, peeled off five $100 bills, and tossed the cash on my lap. “C’mon, Sky King. Do it. Lower.”
Once upon a time, for that kind of money, I would’ve turned off my transponder and gone wave skimming. But for once, I could truthfully say, I didn’t need the money. I could also say that hard work and determination had ultimately played only minor roles in my having achieved financial independence. What mattered, as it turned out, was an obstinate cat, YouTube, and sheer, blind luck.
I’m a proud graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and a former fighter pilot. For several years after that, I’d kicked doors and pulled triggers in the employ of Uncle Sugar, dispatching bad guys in corners of the globe that most Americans have never heard of. One might think, with such a résumé, that running a civilian flight school and aerial charter service in a well-heeled, seaside resort like Rancho Bonita would’ve been a walk in the park by comparison. I would’ve assumed so, too, which is why I’d hung in there for as long as I had, rarely making ends meet while living in a converted garage apartment with Kiddiot, the world’s stupidest orange tabby cat, before fate intervened. I’d pondered bankruptcy on more occasions than I’m willing to confess. Then, during a commercial break while watching Monday Night Football together, as we always did, my octogenarian landlady, Mrs. Schmulowitz, proposed that I should advertise my service. She even fronted me the funds for a thirty-second spot that would air twice weekly on local public access television.
“What could it hurt?” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “My third husband, Morris, may he rest in peace, he advertised like it was going out of style. TV, newspapers, radio, bus benches, the whole shmegegge. Which is how he became the Bedspread King of Bensonhurst.”
Morris had hit it big after featuring animals in his commercials “borrowed” from the Brooklyn Zoo where his brother, conveniently enough, was the assistant primate handler. Posing on camera with chimps, Mrs. Schmulowitz said, made her third hubby “look almost human by comparison.” She was convinced that I could achieve comparable results by appearing on TV with my overweight, untrainable cat.
The script for the commercial that Mrs. Schmulowitz insisted on writing and producing herself called for me to cuddle Kiddiot in my arms as I sat in the Ruptured Duck’s cockpit and extolled the many virtues of learning to fly. But no sooner had Mrs. Schmulowitz yelled, “Action,” when Kiddiot, who’s never been keen on being held by anyone, especially me, went postal trying to escape and proceeded to fillet my face and arms with his claws. The tape curiously made its way onto YouTube and quickly went viral. Virtually overnight, I had more paying customers than I knew what to do with, including the famous movie star, who lived on a lush, gated estate among the hedgerows of The Knolls, Rancho Bonita’s toniest neighborhood, and whose girlfriends had apparently come across the video online.
“Let’s go,” he said, “lower.”
I took the Benjamins he’d dropped on my lap and handed them back to him. “I just told you. It’ll scare the whales.”
“Okay, make it a thousand.” He glanced at his girlfriends to make sure they were duly impressed, then back at me. “We can play this game all day, amigo. Don’t you know who I am?”
“Yeah, I know who you are,” I said, scanning my airspeed and attitude indicators. “You’re the guy who made one halfway-decent action flick twenty years ago, and the same guy who’s been phoning it in ever since, especially that last commando flick you did with Stallone. That one scene where you lost your arm, where you were still blasting away with the M-60, trying to rally the troops over how much their country needed them? Oh, man. All I could think about was how fortunate you were that there aren’t any laws for overacting because, dude, you’d be in prison for sure.”
He slowly peeled off his expensive shades, the kind I’ll never be able to afford, and gave me one of those Hollywood tough guy looks.
“What did you just say to me?”
“I said we need to save the whales and your one-hour flight’s over. Time to head back to the barn.”
I cranked the yoke hard over, standing the Duck on his right wingtip, the way I used to back in the day, when I flew A-10 Thunderbolts for the air force. The maneuver slammed the famous movie star into the passenger door hard enough that he yelped. I thought he might’ve injured his shoulder. Turns out it was among the finest acting he’d ever done.
V
Lunch was a bag of Doritos and two stale Oreo cookies I found buried under some maintenance records on the metal government surplus desk inside my “office,” which was really a windowless storage closet I rented from airplane mechanic Larry Kropf in his World War II-era hangar at the Rancho Bonita airport. I was booked solid that day: After dropping off the famous movie star and his girlfriends, I gave one-hour lessons to four new student pilots and sat in on a conference call with the directors of a nonprofit feline rescue agency up in San Jose. They wanted to know, in light of my sudden YouTube fame thanks to Kiddiot, whether I’d be interested in serving as their volunteer spokesman. I declined.
I topped off both of the Duck’s wing tanks at the self-service fuel pump on the west end of the airfield and taxied back to the hangar as the sun was calling it a day. Over the ocean, puffs of altocumulus blazed crimson, dabbed on a cerulean sky. The kind of calendar-quality sunset that if you didn’t know any better looked Photoshopped, the kind my late ex-wife would’ve quietly savored.
Larry walked over, sipping a Diet Coke as I chocked and tied down the plane on the flight line.
“How was your day?” he asked.
“Crazy busy, in a good way.”
“Looked like it. Must feel pretty good, making some decent bank for a change, eh, Logan?”
“No complaints.”
Larry looked to be in a rare, no-complaints mood himself. He’d recently undergone gastric bypass surgery, which had shaved eighty pounds off his 320-pound frame. He was still a big man by any measure, though, rocking an unkempt beard and black-frame, Buddy Holly-style
glasses with lenses thick enough they could’ve fried ants. He was wearing his usual navy blue work pants, belted tightly to compensate for his recent weight loss, a vintage San Francisco 49ers ball cap, and a stretchedout T-shirt smeared with hydraulic fluid that read, “4 out of 3 people struggle with math.”
“So,” Larry said, “you doing okay otherwise?”
I knew what he was asking about: Savannah, my ex. More than six years after divorcing, we’d reconciled and agreed to start over. That I’d gotten her pregnant played no small role in our decision to reunite. Then she died. Half a year had passed since then, and I still couldn’t bring myself to talk openly about what had happened.
“I’m hanging in there, Larry.”
“Listen, if you ever just feel like talking . . .”
“I’ll call Dr. Phil.”
“I’m serious, Logan.”
“Me, too.”
He grunted and changed the subject, pointing with his chin behind me. “Helluva show.”
I turned. The sun was sliding into the ocean, rimming the watery horizon with rays of light angled upward from the other side of the planet like gifts from Olympus. Or maybe gifts from Savannah. I snugged down the tie-down rope under the Duck’s left wing and tried not to miss her so much, which pretty much was impossible.
“The wife’s making lasagna tonight,” Larry said. “Lemme tell ya, you haven’t had lasagna until you’ve had hers. Sometimes I think she’s trying to kill me with all that cholesterol so she can get the insurance money and marry some rich doctor, but am I complaining? You gotta die of something, right?”
I smiled.
He paused. Then he said, “She’s making plenty. Why don’t you come over?”
“Did you just invite me to dinner, Larry?”
“Me? Hell, no. The wife. She’s inviting you over. She’s got a friend coming over. Another nurse at the hospital. She wants to fix you two up.” His eyebrows danced lasciviously. They looked like two fuzzy caterpillars.