The Three-Nine Line

by David Freed

  “I gotta keep those things up there or my brother would eat himself half to death,” Dot said. “Have a seat.”

  The significance of her words was lost on me in the moment. As I sat down at the table, my mind was on nothing more than those doughnuts. Some people have a weakness for street drugs, others for trashy baked goods. You pick your poison in life.

  Dot was one of those individuals you meet who have no qualms about sharing their life stories without prodding or, in her case, pausing for breath. In the span of five minutes, I learned all about her two divorces, her failed gastric bypass surgery, her unfulfilling career as grocery store checker, her bouts with cancer, her hysterectomy, the daughter—who took up with a drug dealer—she never talks to anymore, and the son who “decided” to “go gay” and was living a bacchanal life somewhere in the San Francisco area. Not once did she mention her brother, the former prisoner of war, with whom she lived. After a second cup of coffee and having consumed more doughnuts than I’m prepared to admit, I was getting antsy.

  “Any chance Billy’s up yet?”

  “I’ll see.” She got up from the table, walked to where the kitchen intersected a hallway, and yelled, “Billy, wake up and get your butt in here! There’s somebody here to see you.”

  From down the hall I heard a man hack up some morning phlegm with considerable effort, then respond, “Who is it?”

  “What did you say your name was again?” Dot asked me.

  “Logan.”

  “Says his name’s Logan!” Dot shouted. “He wants to talk to you about Vietnam!”

  “Get in here and help me with my leg” came the response.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Dot disappeared down the hall. “It’s always something with you,” I heard her say.

  Checking my phone, I found one new text message from Buzz. It said, simply, “And?” I typed, Meeting with Hallady now. I debated having one more doughnut and opted otherwise. A man has got to know his limits. Mine in this case was six.

  Dot returned, coughing phlegmatically herself. “He’s coming.” She grabbed an asthma inhaler out of a drawer, held it to her lips, and took a hit. “You know, the head checker at the Safeway I worked at, his name was Logan. Real fresh one, that guy. Couldn’t keep his hands off me in the break room. Any relation by chance?”

  “It’s a common name, Dot.”

  “Well, you never know.”

  Rheumy-eyed Billy Hallady hobbled into the kitchen on crutches, coughing. Uncombed and unshaven. Faded long-sleeved pajamas. His left leg, which he had to mechanically kick forward to walk, appeared to be prosthetic from the knee down.

  “Mr. Logan.” He shook my outstretched hand with his left one, which he could barely raise above his waist. With Dot’s assistance, he lowered himself into the chair across the table from mine. “What would I do without you, kid?” he said to her, smiling yellowed teeth.

  “You’d probably be dead in a week.” She parked a single doughnut in front of him and returned the box to the top of the refrigerator. “Don’t ask for any more because you aren’t getting any.”

  Hallady gave me a wink. “Isn’t she something? After my wife died, I had nobody else to take care of me so my little sis here volunteered for the duty.”

  Dot let Ferdinand out in the backyard, brought Hallady a cup of coffee, and pecked him on the top of his bald scalp. She said she had a doctor’s appointment at ten thirty, reminded him of his own appointment at noon, promised to be back in time to drive him, and left to go get dressed.

  “So, my sister says you’re planning a trip to Vietnam and you wanna know what’s it like? I was just back over there, you know.” He took a bite of doughnut and strained to raise the coffee cup to his lips.

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about, Commander.”

  A light came on in his eyes. “You’re the gentleman who went to see my grandson yesterday. He called last night. Told me what you said, how you think I killed that guard. I got a call from somebody in Washington after I got back, asked me the same thing. I told her I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.”

  “Did you kill the guard?”

  He set his cup down. “In high school, I was a three-sport letterman. There wasn’t a ball that didn’t have my name on it. When I took my commission, I weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds. I could bench over three hundred pounds. All muscle. Not an ounce of fat.” Slowly, painfully, he hiked up the sleeve covering his withered right arm. His bicep looked like something a wild animal had chewed on. “This is what that bastard did to me. Strung me up and left me to hang for days, the tips of my toes barely touching the ground, until my shoulders came out of their sockets. Stomped me. Beat me with that tire iron until the interrogation room floor ran red. And you want to know if I killed him? Hell, yes, I killed him. A thousand times. Ten thousand times. Every night in my dreams.”

  Hallady, I realized, was physically incapable of assaulting anyone.

  He turned and watched Ferdinand chasing a squirrel in the backyard. “The VA says I’m 100 percent disabled. I don’t have the strength to brush my own teeth anymore. How the hell do you think I’d have the strength to pick up a knife and stab a man with it?”

  “What about your grandson?”

  “What about him?”

  “He was a marine.”

  Hallady looked back at me, shaking his head. “Sean’s a pussycat. He doesn’t have it in him.”

  “How can you be so sure, Commander? He knows how much you suffered. He worships you. He’d do anything for you.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Mr. Logan. My grandson didn’t put that gook out of his misery, and neither did I.”

  The way he broke eye contact, though, and nervously licked his lips, staring down at his hands, told me he knew things he wasn’t saying.

  “You know who killed him, don’t you?”

  “I’d like you to leave, Mr. Logan.”

  “Not until you tell me the truth.”

  “I got nothing to say to you.”

  “The people I work for answer directly to the president, which means whatever you tell me goes straight to the White House.”

  He looked up at me, glowering. “You think I give a good goddamn? I didn’t vote for that son of a bitch.”

  “Commander, you’re a retired naval officer with a distinguished combat record. A national hero, a patriot. This is a matter of national security. You have an obligation to tell me what you know.”

  I stood as Hallady abruptly grabbed his crutches and willed himself out of his chair, grimacing in pain. I tried to assist him, but he pushed me away. “The only obligation I have,” he said, seething, “is to the eternal memory of those boys I went over there with who never came back. You can find your own way out.”

  He teetered angrily toward the back door.

  I wanted to ask him how he’d been able to sit through dinner at some fancy hotel with a sociopath who’d left him a cripple. How do you break bread with a man, exchange pleasantries with him, when he’s robbed you of your dignity and health, when he took such apparent delight in your agony? Had I been among the captured pilots tossed into the Hanoi Hilton and survived Mr. Wonderful’s brutality, I’m sure I, too, would’ve dreamed of killing him a thousand times over. Part of me wanted to thank Billy Hallady for his sacrifice. Part of me knew no expression or gesture of appreciation could ever do that sacrifice justice.

  “Just one question before I go, Commander. Do you speak Vietnamese?”

  “Hell, no.”

  He pushed open the back door and maneuvered himself outside, no easy feat on crutches. Ferdinand came running up with a little rubber ball and tried to get him to throw it, but Hallady paid no attention to him. He walked to the far corner of the yard, his back turned to me, his gaze to the west. He might’ve been weeping. I couldn’t tell from where I was standing.

  Could I have threatened him, forced him to divulge all he knew? Maybe. But there are some things you just don’t do,
no matter how pragmatically or legally justified. Ethical behavior, the Buddha believed, is based on whether an action is harmful to oneself or others. One’s own personal “code of conduct” is how I remember Steve Cohen once defining that otherwise invisible boundary that deters people from doing bad things. I wasn’t about to get tough with an infirm old warrior in the name of some international trade agreement about which I couldn’t have cared less.

  Besides, without even knowing it, Hallady already had given me the answer I was looking for.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  With the Los Angeles freeway system its usual overburdened quagmire, the drive back to Rancho Bonita took nearly three hours, twice as long as it should’ve. No accidents, just too many, many people. How they all endure putting up with being stuck in vehicular purgatory hour after hour, day upon day, without shooting each other more frequently than they do, I’ll never know. Gridlocked on the westbound 101 somewhere between the Lankershim and Cahuenga exits, I began to fantasize about the A-10s I used to fly, and how its Gatling gun would’ve easily blown a path through all those other cars and trucks impeding my progress. But then I remembered the Buddha’s teachings. Patience in all things. You’ll live longer.

  I turned on the radio and surfed through innumerable stations—Spanish speakers, rap “artists,” an evangelical conman imploring his listeners to send him money, and some over-orchestrated country-western yahoo waxing poetic about his big red tractor—before I hit upon Linda Ronstadt singing “Desperado,” the Eagles’s maudlin salute to lonely guys everywhere. I thought about Savannah and allowed myself to wallow in the luxurious misery that song always brings out in me, but only for a minute. I turned off the radio, trapped on the 101, going nowhere fast, and focused on who killed Mr. Wonderful.

  Reconstructing that night in my mind, the question all came down to one salient consideration: if any of the three former American prisoners of war had, in fact, murdered Mr. Wonderful, or if Billy Hallady’s grandson, Sean, had done the deed, how could any of them have learned that the former prison guard enjoyed late-night walks around the lake in downtown Hanoi where his body was discovered? The Halladys didn’t speak Vietnamese. Neither did the late Virgil Stoneburner.

  Steve Cohen spoke Vietnamese fluently.

  Hard as it was for me to conceive, there was no denying the possibility that my reasoned, insightful former professor, whose love of philosophy and alternative thinking had ultimately helped reshape my taste for violence, had himself committed the most violent of acts.

  I called Buzz and told him that I was driving home to Rancho Bonita, where I intended to turn in my rental car, then fly the Ruptured Duck up to Monterey that evening to confront Cohen.

  “And how sure are you that it is Cohen?”

  “I’m not, Buzz, but that’s as good as I’ve got right now.”

  “The president doesn’t want to know if it is as ‘good as you got,’ Logan. He wants to know if Cohen’s the guy, yes or no. If Cohen is the guy, they’re gonna need time with the legal beagles over at Justice to figure out what to do with him.”

  “Understood. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

  “You’re gonna need a backup team,” Buzz said. “We’ve got assets in San Francisco. I can have a quick reaction force on station by midmorning. DOD’s got that language institute in Monterey. It’s a secure facility. You can stage there before engaging.”

  “The only thing a quick reaction force’ll do is scare the guy into having a coronary. We’re talking about an old man here, Buzz, not al-Qaeda.”

  “A cornered dog is still a cornered dog. Young or old, Logan, they’re both capable of biting your face. You’ve been around. You should know that.”

  “Look, I go back a long way with this guy. I just find it hard to believe he’s capable of going postal on me, guilty or otherwise.”

  “You didn’t believe he was capable of murder, either, before you called just now to tell me you think he may be dirty.”

  “Touché.”

  I made arrangements to rendezvous with Buzz’s QRF force at 0900 the next day in Monterey, a scenic seaside community south of San Francisco that I was more than passingly familiar with. When I was with Alpha, I’d spent three months there at the Defense Department’s language institute, learning enough Arabic to order a decent falafel, and to make myself understood when ordering HVTs to drop their weapons, before shooting them anyway. Dead, I found, was always a much easier way to go when hunting high value targets who were wanted dead or alive. Less risk that way of being misunderstood linguistically.

  From Washington’s perspective, Buzz said, the situation involving the Vietnamese was beginning to unravel. A newspaper in Boca Raton, where Virgil Stoneburner lived, had somehow gotten wind of his death in Hanoi and run a short piece, which had been picked up by other papers in south Florida. The White House was beginning to field inquiries from other media outlets.

  “One way or the other,” Buzz said, “this thing is gonna break wide open, probably by no later than tomorrow. The newshounds are gonna want to know whether your guy did it or not. Sounds to me like he did.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “Just so we’re clear on the stakes, Logan, the most powerful man on the planet is personally counting on you—and, no, I’m not talking about me. Plus, international free trade and socioeconomic stability in Southeast Asia hang in the balance. Not to put pressure on you or anything.”

  “What pressure?”

  Buzz wished me good hunting and hung up.

  Miraculously traffic on the 101 started moving again—then quickly stopped. Again. I’d advanced approximately fifty meters over the past two minutes. At this rate, I’d make it back to Rancho Bonita sometime next year.

  My intention was to fly that night to Monterey, but those aspirations were put on hold the moment I reached the crest of the Conejo Grade west of Thousand Oaks. Across the farm fields of the Oxnard Plain, as far north as I could see, the coast of California was blanketed in fog. I could tell the ceiling was unusually low, probably less than 200 feet. Taking off at night in that kind of soup wouldn’t necessarily pose a problem. However, if the Duck’s engine suddenly quit and I had to attempt a landing, alone, without an autopilot, well, that was potentially a big problem. I decided I’d wait until morning and reassess the weather before launching or not. Worst case: I could always catch a few hours’ sleep, roll out of the rack at zero dark, and drive in my truck to Monterey. From Rancho Bonita, I’d be looking at about five long hours on the road, versus two in the air. When you’re a pilot, driving is an anathema, a mode of transportation intended for mere mortals. I preferred to fly.

  V

  Mrs. Schmulowitz was clad in a pair of farmer’s bib overall shorts. She’d been gardening all day.

  “I’m making liver and onions for dinner,” she said, washing her hands at the kitchen sink. “I’ll make you some, too.”

  I’ll eat just about anything—and have—but liver? No can do.

  “That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Schmulowitz, but, really, I’m not hungry.”

  “Not hungry? You must not be feeling well. C’mere, let’s have a look at you.” She quickly dried her hands on a New York Giants dish towel, reached up, and pressed her left palm to my forehead. “Not feverish.” She probed my neck. “No swollen glands. Stick out your tongue.”

  “I feel fine, Mrs. Schmulowitz. I’m just not in the mood for liver, that’s all.”

  “Liver’s good for you. It’s loaded with iron.”

  “How about we go out to eat instead? My treat.”

  “You have no money, bubby.”

  “Actually, Mrs. Schmulowitz, I’m doing pretty well right now. C’mon, for once, let me spring for dinner.”

  She tapped her chin, debating my offer. “You know, come to think of it, I am in the mood for a little schnitzel.”

  “Schnitzel it is.”

  “Wunderbar! I’ll go change my clothes. I won’t be but a minute.”

  Vr />
  Unfortunately, the only German restaurant in Rancho Bonita was run by a dictatorial woman from Munich named Gert who wore lederhosen and reeked of unfiltered Camels. Every hour or so, she’d go around handing out lyric sheets printed in German, put on German music, and demand that diners sing along without telling anyone what exactly they were singing. Mrs. Schmulowitz dubbed her “Grandma Adolph.”

  “How’s your schnitzel?” Gert asked me between songs, more of an inquisition than a question.

  “No complaints.”

  “Gut. Gesunder appetit.”

  After she moved on, Mrs. Schmulowitz said, with one eyebrow raised, “Notice how she didn’t ask me how my schnitzel was?”

  “How is your schnitzel, Mrs. Schmulowitz?”

  “My schnitzel is fine. That’s not the point. Do you want to know why she didn’t ask me?”

  “Because she’s jealous of your dazzling beauty.”

  Whatever my landlady was about to say in condemnation of our hostess in particular and the German people in general went right out the window amid my apparently successful effort to avoid conflict by employing gratuitous flattery. She knew what I was doing and blew me a kiss across the table anyway.

  “Oy gevalt, the last time a man commented on my ‘dazzling beauty,’ Jimmy Carter was in the White House. I will admit to you right here and now, bubby, that I lusted after that man. Which is why I purposely avoided visiting our nation’s capital when he was in office. That reminds me of a story.”

  I smiled and nodded in all the right places as Mrs. Schmulowitz droned on about the time she led a field trip to Washington. After the kids had all bedded down that night in the hotel, she said, she ended up plying the streets of Georgetown in the backseat of Henry Kissinger’s stretch limo with a magnum of Dom Pérignon. When Kissinger got too frisky, as was his reputation, apparently, Mrs. Schmulowitz let him have it “right in the mansicles.”

  Truthfully, though, I wasn’t paying much attention. My thoughts were on the morning, how I was going to get to Monterey and, once there, how I was going to extract a confession from Steve Cohen about what had happened that night in Hanoi. Whether or not he was a killer, as far as I was concerned, the psychological scars he bore from his years as a prisoner of war, the sacrifices he’d suffered for his country, afforded him a certain respect. In that context, the notion of trying to dislodge the truth from him through manipulation or other interrogation techniques seemed distasteful to me. He deserved to be dealt with in a straightforward manner, and that’s what I intended to do.