by David Freed
“Nice crib.”
“Crissy has an eye for all this. Loves going first class. I guess when you grow up dirt poor like she did, all this stuff takes on added significance.”
His wife, Walker said, was on her way home from the gym and a Humane Society board meeting.
“How ’bout a beer—oh, that’s right, you don’t drink. What about some chow? You hungry?”
“I could eat.”
“Let’s get you fixed up.”
He led me into a kitchen nearly as big as my apartment. The fixtures were top of the line, stainless steel, industrial strength. A frail-looking girl of about ten wearing thick black-frame glasses and a Beauty and the Beast nightgown was perched on a stool at the granite-topped breakfast bar, absorbed in a laptop computer. She had curly blonde hair and a complexion so pallid as to be almost translucent.
“Ryder, can you say hello to Mr. Logan? He’ll be staying with us for a few days.”
She peered intently at the computer screen, acknowledging my presence not at all.
“My granddaughter, Ruthie’s little girl,” Walker explained, lowering his voice. “We assumed guardianship after her mama . . .”
I pretended not to notice the tears in his eyes. He shook his head and walked to the refrigerator.
The computer made noises like farm animals.
“What’re you playing, Ryder?”
Ryder said nothing, tapping computer keys. The blue veins under the pale skin of her temples looked like freeways on a road map.
“Mr. Logan asked you a question, Ryder.”
“A game.”
“What kind of game?” I asked.
“A game.”
“Ryder, how ’bout you go up and play in your room awhile, so Grampa and Mr. Logan can talk a spell, OK?”
She hopped down from the stool, grabbed the computer, and walked past me toward the stairs.
“Nice meeting you, Ryder.”
No response.
Walker waited until his granddaughter left the room. “She never says hardly a word to anybody. They diagnosed her borderline autistic when she was three. All kinds of health issues. Poor kid. Seems like all we do is take her from one doctor to the next.”
“Kids outgrow a lot of things.”
“I surely hope so.” Walker gazed at the floor, then brightened. “Anyway, what can I get you to drink?”
“Water’s good.”
“Water it is.”
He dispensed ice cubes and chilled water from the refrigerator.
“Larry got your airplane working OK?”
“Better than new,” Walker said, handing me the glass. “Home in time for lunch. He’s a good mechanic.”
“Snappy dresser, too.”
I parked myself on a stool at the breakfast bar and watched Walker dig turkey cold cuts from a Tupperware container. He laid them on a stoneware plate between two slices of fresh sourdough.
“Mayo?”
“Mustard if you’ve got it.”
“A mustard man,” Walker said approvingly. He fetched a small ceramic crock from a cupboard, uncorked it, and meticulously painted each square centimeter of bread with a butter knife. “Bought this stuff at the duty-free last time I was in Paris. It’s the horseradish. Knock your socks off.”
I told him I’d gone to see Munz’s lawyer, Charles Dowd.
“He do you any good?”
“He told me to read the file in court if I wanted any information on the case. Then his investigator told me to back off—I’m pretty sure it was his investigator, anyway. He accused me of stirring up trouble.”
Walker set the sandwich in front of me.
“Thanks.”
“I’m surprised Dowd reacted that way. He told me outside the courtroom one day how sorry he was for my loss, that he was only doing his job. Said he was angry he ever agreed to represent Dorian Munz in the first place, but that Munz’s parents paid him to do it.”
“Nobody likes a loser.”
“You got that right.”
I took a bite of the sandwich while Walker went to wipe down the counter with a sponge.
“I also went to see Janet Bollinger,” I said.
“How’s Janet doing?”
“Not too well. She was stabbed this afternoon. She may not make it.”
Walker paused from his labors and looked back at me.
“Janet Bollinger was stabbed?”
I nodded and kept eating.
“Where was this?”
“In her apartment.”
Walker turned away once more and stared down at his hands, spread flat on the counter. “Who would do such a thing?”
“One thing I’m wondering, Hub, is why you didn’t tell me you and Janet were in a car accident the day after Dorian Munz was executed.”
Again, Walker looked back over at me, eyebrows arched, surprised that I knew.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“A little bird told me.”
He put away the mustard, formulating his words carefully. “Janet called me up out of nowhere. Said she wanted to talk. I agreed to meet her for coffee. She said she was upset about what happened to Munz. Felt like it was all her fault. Said she wished she’d never testified. I told her Munz deserved what he got for killing Ruthie. She wouldn’t hear it, though. Kept saying she was to blame. Over and over.”
“How’d the accident happen?”
“I rear-ended her car when we were both pulling out of the parking lot. Foot just slipped off the brake. Stupid. Police officer happened to be going in for lunch. He issued us a report number for the insurance. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got a ticket. That was about it.”
A sour queasiness coated the back of my throat. Maybe it was the melodramatic way he’d responded to the news of the assault on Janet Bollinger, or the expression on his face when he realized I knew about the car accident, but I was left with the unswerving impression that Hub Walker somehow was already aware of what had happened that afternoon to Bollinger.
“How well did you know Janet, Hub?”
Walker shrugged. “We had her over for Sunday supper a time or two. Came to Thanksgiving one year, as I recall. Jan and Ruth were pretty close there for awhile. Then, after Ruth broke up with Munz, Jan started going out with him, and that was about it. She wrote me a note after the trial. Apologized for ever getting involved with him. Said it was a big mistake.”
“Did you respond to her?”
Walker shook his head. “Wasn’t nothin’ gonna bring Ruthie back anyhow. Some things are best left alone. First time I heard from Jan Bollinger in years was when she said she wanted to meet for coffee.”
He asked me if the police had any idea who might’ve attacked Bollinger. I said I didn’t know. He said he wanted to send her flowers and asked what hospital she’d been transported to. I said I didn’t know that, either.
“It’s somewhere in Chula Vista. That’s what the paramedics said.”
Walker scratched his ear. “She was living down in Imperial Beach last I remember.”
I nodded.
“Plenty of shady characters down there these days,” he said.
“Plenty of shady characters everywhere these days.”
I heard the low hum of an electric garage door opener kick on, and a garage door being raised. Walker ambled across the kitchen and opened a side door leading to the garage. A car pulled in and shut down. A car door opened and slammed shut. From inside the garage, Crissy Walker said, “We were out of milk. I stopped off on the way home. Whose Escalade is that in the driveway?”
“Mr. Logan’s.”
“He’s here?”
“He is. Got in a while ago.”
“Where’s Ryder?”
“Upstairs, playing. I fed her supper.”
Crissy Walker entered the kitchen lugging two cloth bags from Trader Joe’s overloaded with groceries and set them on the counter.
“Welcome, Mr. Logan,” she said. “So nice to see you again.”
“Ni
ce to see you, too.”
I slid off my stool and asked if there was anything else to carry in. Crissy said no and thanked me for offering to help. She was wearing purple Nike running shoes, matching nylon warm-up pants and a silver leotard. The hair of her loose bun hung down in damp strands, like she’d been working out. Even sweaty, the former centerfold was a sight.
“Somebody stabbed Janet Bollinger,” Hub said grimly.
Crissy’s jaw fell open. “What?”
“This afternoon. In her apartment. Mr. Logan just told me.”
She clasped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. How badly is she hurt? Is she gonna be OK?”
I shrugged. “She didn’t look too good when they were putting her in the ambulance.”
“Well, have they at least caught who did it?”
“Not that I’m aware of. One of the detectives working the case wants me to help them out a little.”
Walker frowned, was none too pleased by my revelation.
“What do you mean, ‘help out a little’?”
“They want me to pass along any info I might trip over in the course of the work I’m doing for you, anything that might be relevant to their investigation. No big deal.”
“I’m paying you good money to work for me,” Walker said, “not the police.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I feel terrible about what happened to Jan, and I’m not saying that it’s her own fault, but she shouldn’t have been living in Imperial Beach to begin with. It’s just not safe down there.”
“It’s not like the sheriff’s department deputized me, Hub. I’m doing my civic duty. You’d do the same.”
Walker exhaled his disapproval, reached down into a cabinet and got out a bottle of Jim Beam.
“I suppose you can do whatever the hell you want.”
A disconcerting thought came to Crissy. She looked over at her husband. “This couldn’t possibly have something to do with Ruthie and Dorian Munz, could it?”
“I’m starting to wonder the same thing,” Walker said, pouring himself three fingers of Kentucky sour mash.
AFTER I finished my turkey sandwich, Hub showed me where I’d be bunking, a small but comfortably appointed casita that doubled as a pool house out back. I dumped my duffel bag and drove to the Amtrak station in downtown San Diego to meet Savannah’s train. I got there ten minutes ahead of its scheduled arrival. Chronically punctual. Another of my many character flaws. I planted myself on a bench trackside, with time to think.
Was there a connection between the stabbing death of Walker’s daughter, Ruth, and the stabbing nearly a decade later of her former Best Friend Forever-turned-romantic rival, Janet Bollinger? I didn’t know enough to proffer a reasoned opinion one way or the other. But if I knew anything, it’s that most people go their entire lives without being violently knifed, or knowing anyone who has. The coincidence seemed more than coincidental.
People lie. Faces never do. The manner in which Walker responded to the news of the assault on Bollinger, as if he already knew, left me uneasy. Not that his response was a slam-dunk psychological assessment. Human behavior is always subject to interpretation. Failing to make eye contact, for example, does not automatically convey deceit. Nor does someone looking you in the eye confirm complete honesty. Those of us assigned to Alpha learned that we had to closely observe our enemies, taking note of their baseline behaviors—how they reacted when you knew they were lying or telling the truth—to accurately assess their nonverbal clues. Still, I couldn’t shed the disquieting notion that Hub Walker, Medal of Honor recipient and living aviation legend, knew something about the attack that afternoon on his daughter’s former friend that he wasn’t telling.
It’s just a job, Logan. You’re only in it for the money.
I forced myself to think other thoughts. The sea air was cool and damp on my face, carrying with it a sweet fragrance I couldn’t place at first. Pittosporum, maybe. Possibly jasmine.
Or pee.
A homeless teenager was using a bush not ten feet behind me as a toilet.
“Hey.”
He glanced over at me, fear in his hollow eyes. He was about sixteen, garbed in a gray hoodie and jeans turned black with filth.
I started to read him the riot act, only I really don’t know what the riot act is. The sugary odor of the kid’s urine told me he was likely diabetic and dehydrated. He also looked hungry and scared.
“Step over here into my office, my man.”
I reached into my pocket to hand him a couple of bucks, but he must’ve thought I was going for a gun, because he ran like a hunted deer.
I’m not my brother’s keeper. I’m not convinced that we are the world. I believe that the world is filled with evil, two-legged monsters who would take from you what is yours in a heartbeat, including your life, if they thought they could get away with it; and that one’s only assurance of safety is hypervigilance—that and a fully loaded weapon. Chasing bad people to the dark corners of the globe in the name of national security had only reinforced those convictions. But in civilian life, I’d come to realize, clichés aside, that there is something to be said for random acts of kindness. Not that such gestures necessarily make the world a better place. They make us feel better and, in the end, maybe that’s what matters most.
I stuffed the cash back in my wallet.
From the north came a shrill whistle and the alarm bells of crossing gates lowering, followed moments later by a single blinding headlight that pierced the night a half-mile up the tracks. Savannah’s train was in. For once, Amtrak was on time.
The locomotive slowed as it passed me and hissed to a stop. Savannah descended from the third passenger coach toting a cocoa-brown overnight valise while wrestling with a matching, oversized suitcase big enough that Houdini could’ve hidden in it. I grabbed it from her and maneuvered it down the steps, onto the train platform. The suitcase weighed eighty pounds if it weighed an ounce.
“Eisenhower packed lighter than this when he invaded Normandy.”
“Eisenhower knew the itinerary,” Savannah said. “I don’t.”
She was wearing calfskin, high-heeled boots that came up just below her knees, form-fitting skinny jeans, and a short-waisted, black leather jacket over a periwinkle camisole. On a scale of one-to-ten, she was close to infinity.
“How was your trip?”
“Long,” Savannah said.
“You get something to eat?”
“A hot dog from the café car. They had an egg salad sandwich, but it looked more like a science experiment.”
I had to smile.
We walked to my rented Escalade, Savannah shouldering her tote, me wrangling her rolling armoire, which kept pulling to the right. The SUV was in a pay-in-advance self-parking lot directly across from the tracks. I hadn’t paid. Given the hour, I figured the meter maid would be off-duty. I was right. No ticket on the windshield. Good karma.
I pressed a button on the key chain remote control, unlocking everything, and opened the passenger side door for Savannah, before hefting her suitcase into the back.
“My, what a big car you have,” she said. “Now the Saudis can afford to build another palace.”
“Just be glad I didn’t rent a Prius. We would’ve had to leave Houdini at the station.”
We climbed in and pulled out of the lot, heading north on Pacific Highway. Almost immediately, I noticed headlights trailing behind us. A left onto West Ash Street, a right onto North Harbor Drive, along the all-but-deserted waterfront, then west on Laurel confirmed my suspicions: somebody was tailing us.
“Where are we going?” Savannah asked.
“The Walkers. They live up in La Jolla. Nice little guesthouse out by the pool.”
“How many beds in that nice little guesthouse?”
I glanced over at her.
“I’d just like to know what the sleeping arrangements are, Logan, that’s all.”
“We’ll figure it out when we get there, OK?”
“No, Logan, definite
ly not OK. The unknown equals tension, and tension in any relationship creates conflict. Or are you forgetting what our marriage was like most of the time?”
“Some of the time,” I said, correcting her.
“It’s one bed, isn’t it?”
“I’ll sleep on the floor.”
I blew through a yellow light and hooked a left, back onto northbound Pacific Highway. A US Airways Boeing 757 thundered in less than 200 feet overhead on short final to runway 27 at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field. The other car was still behind us, its headlights in my rearview.
“Why are we going so fast?”
“No traffic, open road. This is Southern California. Do you know how rare that is? I’m just enjoying the moment.”
Savannah bought none of it. She leaned forward and checked the side-view mirror. “We’re being followed.”
“Really? News to me.”
“C’mon, Logan. I can see the guy. He’s right there.”
Our pursuer was now all but hugging my bumper. I floored it. He floored it, drafting my rear like Dale Earnhardt at Daytona. Then blue and red lights swirled on his windshield. There came the whoop-whop of a siren.
Our pursuer was an unmarked police cruiser.
I pulled over to the shoulder of the road. The officer got out and advanced on my side of the SUV, silhouetted by the spotlight he’d purposely aimed at my mirrors to blind me to his approach.
His right hand rested cautiously on the butt of his holster pistol as he slowly scanned the SUV’s interior with his Maglite. He looked young enough to have graduated that morning from high school.
“Any idea how fast you were going tonight, sir?”
“Obviously not fast enough to outrun you.”
“You were trying to outrun me?”
“I was concerned you might be somebody who intended to do us harm.”
“Why would somebody intend to do you harm?”
“My question exactly,” Savannah said, eyeing me hard.