Fangs Out

by David Freed

  He repeated what his investigator, Bunny Myers, had already told me. That Janet Bollinger had called shortly after I’d been to see Dowd, claiming to have new information that she insisted would clear Munz of Ruth Walker’s murder. Bollinger seemed hounded by guilt, the attorney said.

  “Munz was dead and gone,” Dowd said. “Nothing I could do about that, but he was still my client. I felt like I’d let him down in the end. I owed him something. So I sent my investigator to see Ms. Bollinger. He shows up, finds her bleeding to death, and now he’s in the sheriff’s lockup. But I know he didn’t hurt her. He would’ve had no reason.”

  Dowd’s prominent forehead and upper lip glistened with sweat. His knee bounced nervously, vibrating the table. I asked him why he thought I would know anything about the threat he’d received.

  “You’re digging around for some kernel of truth that would erase any taint of guilt on Greg Castle’s part in the death of Ruth Walker. Her father hired you for that purpose. Is that not what you told me?”

  “Mr. Walker concluded my services were no longer needed.”

  “You’re not working for him anymore?”

  I nodded.

  Dowd snatched the note away from me and sat back with a puzzled expression. “So, if you didn’t send me this, who did?”

  “I’m wondering if maybe you didn’t do a little cut-and-pasting yourself.”

  “You think I threatened myself?” Dowd gaped at me. “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “To deflect suspicion from you. Or your investigator.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  The bartender arrived with Dowd’s beer. He hastily folded the letter and stuffed it in his suit coat as she set the fresh bottle in front of him and snatched up his empty. A motorcycle was tattooed over her left breast, along with the words, “Live to ride, ride to live.”

  “Thanks, Roxie.”

  “Four bucks, sugar.”

  Dowd pulled a five-spot from his wallet and told her to keep the change.

  “What’re you drinking, player?” Roxie asked me, cracking her gum.

  “I’ll have an Arnold Palmer, please.”

  “Take a look around. Does it look like we got fresh-squeezed lemonade around here?”

  “Got any juice? Preferably fresh-squeezed.”

  “How ’bout a beer? We got plenty of that.”

  “Ice water. In a clean glass.”

  Roxie shook her head in disgust and walked back to the bar.

  Dowd waited until she was out of earshot. “This letter,” he seethed, tapping his chest, “came in the mail. To my office. To me. Personally. I did not ‘cut-and-paste’ it to ‘deflect’ suspicion from either me or my investigator. Some son of a bitch threatened me and I want to know who it is.”

  “Could be the same S-O-B who tried to kill me and two sheriff’s detectives a couple of days ago by screwing with the engine on my airplane. You wouldn’t happen to have any insights on that, would you, Mr. Dowd?” I watched his reaction carefully.

  “I don’t,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

  The attorney gulped half his beer and blotted his forehead with the backside of his tie. The door to the bar creaked open behind me. Dowd glanced over my shoulder, jittery.

  Something didn’t feel right.

  I leaned forward in my chair and reached down for the dive knife lashed to my calf just as a burly forearm crooked around my throat. I sprung to my feet and pivoted left, in the same manner a bullfighter slips an onrushing steer, sliding behind my assailant and grabbing his left wrist in one fluid motion, while twisting his arm behind his back and using his own momentum to slam him head-first into the table. He flopped from the sticky wooden tabletop like a Slinky onto the floor, out cold. My knife never left its sheath.

  “That was totally badass!” Roxie said approvingly as she stepped over the guy and put a glass of water down on the table in front of me.

  I glanced around for any other takers—there were none—then stooped to make sure that my assailant—the Camel-puffing biker whose passing acquaintance I’d made outside the bar—was still breathing. He was.

  “His name’s Dwayne Streeter,” Dowd said.

  “Friend of yours?”

  “I used to represent him. Big pot grower. Feds popped him awhile back on an intent to distribute rap. I got it knocked down to straight possession. He was convinced I was Perry Mason after that.”

  Dowd said he thought I’d been the one who had sent him the threatening letter and wanted to confront me—but not without first arranging to have Streeter watch his back in the event I tried anything hinky.

  “We exchanged pleasantries outside,” I said.

  “The idiot was supposed to wait ten minutes, then come in and make sure we were cool,” Dowd said, gazing down at his unconscious former client. “You must’ve made him a little nervous. You make a lot of people nervous, Mr. Logan.”

  “One of my many gifts.”

  The attorney said he had no theories as to who might’ve murdered Janet Bollinger, and professed to know nothing of what had happened to my airplane. The fact that someone had sabotaged the Duck, Dowd noted, was affirmation enough that the threatening note he’d received in the mail was legit. He said he’d be skipping town for awhile and staying with relatives somewhere back East until things cooled off.

  “Could be Greg Castle killed those two young women, could be he didn’t,” Dowd said. “But I’ll tell you one thing, ain’t none of this conducive to my blood pressure.”

  Nor to mine. A tried-and-true Buddhist would’ve accepted with equanimity such trifling concerns as a pair of unsolved homicides, a sabotaged airplane, an obstinate ex-wife, a geriatric landlady gone missing, and an AWOL orange tabby cat. I clearly was not yet a true Buddhist, not by a long shot. My throbbing headache reminded me I had a long way to go before attaining true enlightenment.

  Streeter began moaning, rubbing his head where he’d smacked the table.

  “He’s OK,” Roxie the bartender said. “Got nothing in there but mush anyhow.”

  Dowd said he’d call me if he heard anything new.

  “I’d tread lightly if I were you, Logan,” he advised me. “There’s a lot of gators floating out there. One of ’em’s likely to jump up and bite you on the butt, you don’t watch out.”

  “Free legal advice. I’ll take it.”

  “Ain’t nothing in this world free, Mr. Logan.”

  “You’ve obviously never been to Costco.”

  We shook hands.

  Streeter’s girlfriend was sitting on another Harley as I walked out, smoking yet another cigarette, getting friendly with another motorcycle enthusiast. Neither of them paid me the slightest notice as I walked by.

  There was a drugstore three blocks away. I bought a bottle of aspirin and chewed four tablets in the parking lot. Savannah called. She’d found a rock, smashed the window in my landlady’s back door, and searched the house. The mailbox, she said, was full. There was no sign of Mrs. Schmulowitz.

  I WENT to a locals’ eatery that night not far from SeaWorld and the beach, ordered a charbroiled turkey burger and chili fries at the counter, then realized after I sat down outside with my meal that I’d forgotten mustard. By the time I returned to my picnic table, thieving sea gulls had made off with everything on my plate, including the pickle. The manager, who looked like he greased his hair in the deep fryer, said it was not the restaurant’s fault I’d been ripped off by wild animals. If I wanted another burger, he said dismissively, I’d have to pay for it.

  “Gulls will be gulls,” he said.

  In caveman times, I would have fed him to a T. Rex, then pried open the cash drawer of his computerized register and given myself a refund. The fantasy was short-lived. Cavemen, I realized, didn’t exist in the time of dinosaurs. I’m also fairly sure they didn’t have computerized cash registers. Still, I left without making a scene, pleased by my own restraint.

  Taco Bell beckoned yet again.

  Former baseball
star and death penalty pitchman Eric LaDucrie was sitting alone near the drink dispenser, working his way through a super-sized soda and a twelve-pack of tacos, when I walked in.

  “I know you,” he said, pausing momentarily from his caloric orgy. Red hot sauce dribbled down his chin. “Logan, right?”

  “Right.”

  I ordered my requisite two Burrito Supremes and an iced tea.

  “Is that for here or to go?” the pimply kid behind the counter asked.

  “To go.”

  He took my money and gave me back a plastic cup along with a receipt. I walked to the drink dispenser and filled my cup. The tea wasn’t bad.

  “Hey, I’ve been thinking a little bit about what you asked me the other day,” LaDucrie said, “you know, about Ruth Walker? I have a confession.”

  “Wait, don’t tell, lemme guess. You murdered her?”

  The Junkman blanched. “What?”

  A short guy in his mid-thirties wearing board shorts, leather sandals, and a gray San Diego State T-shirt approached LaDucrie deferentially, holding the hand of a shy little boy. Their rotund builds and black, curly hair were identical. Father and son.

  “Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt anything, but aren’t you the Junkman?”

  “I am.”

  The man’s eyes gleamed like LaDucrie was Cy Young himself.

  “Wow, this is a real honor for me. We used to watch you play at the Murph all the time when I was this little dude’s age,” he said, patting the top of the boy’s head. The man got down on one knee next to LaDucrie’s table, his arm curled around his son’s waist, and nodded in awe at the former baseball player. “Jake, this man was one of the finest pitchers the Padres ever had. I watched him strike out Mark McGwire once on three balls. Old McGwire, he never—”

  “—Autograph’s twenty bucks, kimosabe, picture’s fifty,” LaDucrie said, cutting him off. “You can order off my website if you want.”

  The fan stared at the Junkman, appalled by his attitude. He got up off his knee and grabbed his son’s hand.

  “I remember when you used to be great, man.”

  LaDucrie snorted derisively, watching them walk out, then turned and eyed me with disdain.

  “What makes you think I killed Ruth Walker? I’ve never killed anybody in my life. Dorian Munz killed her.”

  “According to the jury.”

  “That’s right. According to the jury. That’s why they stuck a needle in his arm. And that’s why for you to say something like that to somebody like me is total bullshit.”

  “You’re getting awful worked up, Junkman, for something that’s total BS.”

  “Yeah? Well, you would, too, if some cocky asshole accused you of doing something you didn’t do.”

  “Number 263. Two Burrito Supremes?”

  My order was ready. I grabbed the bag.

  “You were about to confess something,” I said, “before you were so rudely interrupted by your adoring masses.”

  LaDucrie wiped his mouth with a brown paper napkin, wadded it up, and tossed it on his tray. “I was wrong, about what I said about Ruth Walker. I never met her. I had her confused with somebody else. You asked me about another chick, too.”

  “Janet Bollinger.”

  “Janet Bollinger. Yeah, that’s right. I looked her up online. You probably think I murdered her, too.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  He was looking at me square in the eyes when he said it.

  DUTCH HOLLAND was more than happy to let me spend another night with him in his hangar at Montgomery Airport. He was mourning the imminent loss of his flying pal, Al Demaerschalk, and said he welcomed the company. He waxed poetic about bombing Luftwaffe airfields for more than two hours while I nursed a couple of cans of root beer. We were both asleep by nine o’clock.

  It was still dark when my phone rang.

  “Rise and shine, sleepy head.”

  I checked my watch, rubbing my eyes. “Buzz, it’s four in the morning.”

  “Not on the East Coast it ain’t. You get me those CDs yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then good thing I called early. This way, you got all day to go find a decent record shop. By the way, those letters you gave me—PCAFLR? I ran ’em through California DMV registration. Got a hit.”

  I sat up, suddenly wide awake.

  State motor vehicle records, Buzz said, revealed that a vanity license plate bearing the letters PCAFLR had been issued to a 2006 Ford Ranger pickup, silver in color. The truck’s registered owner was one C.W. Lazarus, thirty-nine, male white, five-ten and 165 pounds, who showed an address on Via De La Valle in the affluent beach town of Del Mar, just north of San Diego. Buzz said he was unwilling to do any additional research using government databases for fear of getting busted by his supervisors. He did, however, check out Lazarus using open source databases during his lunch break, on his own laptop.

  “I couldn’t find anything online on the guy,” Buzz said. “Nada.”

  “That’s impossible. The Googles has something on everybody.”

  “The Googles?”

  “That’s what my landlady calls it. ‘The Googles.’ ”

  “I’ll be looking for those CDs, Logan.”

  “They’re on the way.”

  “Right. Like I haven’t heard that before.”

  Dutch Holland was sleeping fitfully on his cot, mumbling something tortured under his breath. I dressed quietly, the dive knife strapped to my calf, and was out the door before the sun.

  Traffic was sparse on northbound Interstate 5. Southbound was another story—not yet six A.M. and already clogged with commuters heading into downtown San Diego. I felt sorry for those drivers, the repetition of their nine-to-five lives. But not as sorry as C.W. Lazarus was going to be when I finally found him.

  I passed a subdivision of high-end, cookie-cutter homes. Buff-colored stucco walls and red tile roofs. A swimming pool in every backyard. California dreamin’. On my left were the Del Mar Fairgrounds, where the rich sip champagne and place bets on little men riding big horses. The Escalade’s navigation system directed me to exit at Via De La Valle. I got off the freeway and turned left, heading west.

  The sun was beginning to show itself, trimming the edges of high cirrus clouds in scarlet and gold. It was the beginning of one of those perfectly promising mornings. I was hoping to catch my prey asleep, in bed, unawares.

  Eighteen

  C.W. Lazarus lived in a strip mall. Or, more precisely, his mail did. His Ford Ranger pickup was registered to the address of Letters and Whatever, a stationery store where one can get copies made, have passport photos taken, and rent post office boxes where your mail can be delivered when you don’t want anyone to know where you live. The store didn’t open until eight A.M. I had nearly two hours to wait.

  Across the street was a McDonald’s. I ordered two Egg McMuffins and a coffee at the drive-through window, then sat in the Escalade and ate breakfast, feeling as if my arteries were clogging with every bite. I read somewhere that the marketing guru who dreamed up the idea of slapping a fried egg on an English muffin, slathering it with weird orange stuff called “cheese” and dubbing it the “McMuffin” died peacefully in his sleep at age eighty-nine. Who says fast food can kill you?

  I drove back across the street and backed into a space two rows away from Letters and Whatever, with a white BMW 700-series sedan parked between the store and my Escalade. I would maintain surveillance watching my side and rearview mirrors, the Beemer obscuring my presence should Lazarus pull in.

  Then I waited.

  Hunting is mostly waiting. Ask any sniper. You wait and watch without moving as minutes turn to hours, with nothing to do but think. The longer I sat, the more I became convinced that C.W. Lazarus, whoever he was, not only was responsible for what had happened to my airplane, but for what had happened to Janet Bollinger as well. What links, if any, did Lazarus have to Hub Walker? Why would Walker have hired me to delve into a crim
inal investigation that had already been resolved if he feared there was the slightest chance he might be implicated in it? I had no answers to those questions. But I most definitely intended to find them.

  Hunkered in the parking lot of a commercial shopping center with plenty of time on your hands would seem the ideal opportunity to meditate, only my thoughts were too scattered. Plus I was tired. I thought about calling Savannah for any updates on Mrs. Schmulowitz or Kiddiot—or maybe just to hear her voice—but I figured she’d call me if she had any news to share.

  And so I waited.

  At 7:59, a banged-up, mud-splattered red Nissan Sentra turned into the parking lot sporting a bumper sticker that read, “The Dude Abides.” The driver parked in a space directly across from Letters and Whatever, and jumped out, dragging an overstuffed backpack. She was a bespectacled brunette in her mid-twenties, all knees and elbows, with kinky, shoulder-length hair still wet from a shower. Hurriedly, she unlocked the store’s front door and flipped on the lights.

  It was getting toasty inside the Escalade. I rolled down the windows. Other cars began filling the lot, luxury vehicles mostly, shoppers coming and going. None of them drove a silver 2006 Ford Ranger pickup truck with the California vanity plate, “PCAFLR.”

  I waited another hour. Then I went inside.

  The gangly young woman I’d seen earlier was sitting behind the cash register, engrossed in a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. She put down her book and forced a smile. There were no other customers in the store.

  “Welcome to Letters and Whatever. My name is Kathy. How may I help you today?”

  Well, Kathy, for one, you can dispense with the canned corporate salutation that turns you into a minimum wage automaton and sucks from you the kind of refreshing irreverence illustrated by the bumper sticker on your car.

  “Can I borrow your bathroom? I had a little too much coffee this morning.”

  “I’m so sorry, sir. Our restroom is reserved for paying customers.”

  I plucked a ballpoint pen from a nearby pegboard display, took a dollar from my wallet, and attempted to give her the money.