Hot Start

by David Freed

  “I never figured you for such a softie, Kang,” I said, teasing him.

  “Bite me.” He waited for them to leave. After they did, Kang stepped from around the counter. “Come,” he said, “I show you something.”

  I followed him to a storeroom in the back. Hidden under cartons of paper towels stacked atop each other, was a small floor safe. Kang repositioned the cartons, then knelt, glancing over his shoulder to make sure nobody was coming in, and spun the combination lock. Buried deep inside the safe, under various city business licenses, a South Korean passport, and fist-thick stacks of $20 bills bundled together, was a four-by-six manila envelope. Kang slid a single color photograph from the envelope and handed it to me.

  “Check this out,” he said.

  The photo had been shot inside the lavishly appointed passenger cabin of an executive jet. Cumulus clouds billowed outside the cabin windows, suggesting the plane was aloft when the picture was taken. It showed two middle-aged men having sex with three young, attractive women.

  “I think I saw this movie,” I said. “Pulp Friction.”

  Kang made a low, rumbling sound. As close as he ever got to a laugh.

  “Why are you showing me this?”

  “You asked,” Kang said.

  “No, what I asked was whether you thought Dino Birch murdered the Hollisters.”

  Kang pointed to one of the men in the picture. The guy was lying back on a small couch that was covered in zebra skin. An amply endowed beauty with raven hair straddled his lap while kissing a short-haired, sharp-featured blonde with a pair of angel wings tattooed on her back.

  “You know him?” Kang asked, pointing to the man.

  The truth was, I hadn’t really looked that closely at either of the men’s faces, distracted as I was by the women’s bodies. “Yeah, I know him.” I didn’t need a closer look. Who else would upholster a private jet in zebra skin? “It’s Roy Hollister.”

  Closer to the camera, gazing into the lens, a wholesome-looking redhead with emerald eyes and milky skin gripped the back of a club chair, also covered in zebra skin, while the second man stood behind her, his pants to his knees. He was giving her everything he had by the way his face was contorted. A small gold anchor dangled on a chain from the redhead’s neck. She looked bored as hell.

  “What about this guy?” Kang asked, cocking his left brow like an Asian Mr. Spock.

  I studied the man’s face. Those blue eyes. Those teeth that were too white and slightly too big.

  “Congressman Pierce Walton,” I said.

  ELECTED OFFICIALS are not unlike the garbage that accumulates in your kitchen sink if you let it. Both, in my estimation, need to be flushed down the drain regularly, and for essentially the same reason. But that’s not how it works in American politics. Once a candidate is elected, he almost always is reelected, no matter how corrupt he is. And so it was with Rep. Lovell “Pierce” Walton, vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

  Rancho Bonita County voters had returned the dapper, one-time political science professor to Washington eight times, always in the belief that he was the man he portrayed himself as in his campaign ads: a compassionate conservative, avid outdoorsman, and foreign policy expert devoted to all of his constituents, regardless of their party loyalties. He coached his kids’ basketball games when he wasn’t introducing legislation to Make the World a Better Place. He manned the serving line at a local homeless shelter every Christmas Eve. He went duck hunting every fall with his college buddies. He enjoyed meaningful, hand-holding walks on the beach at sunset with his high school sweetheart wife. That was the image Walton’s handlers fed the public anyway. There were faint whispers, always unconfirmed, that afforded a somewhat less savory picture—that his vote could be bought for the price of a golfing junket, and that there was a mean streak in him as broad as the Beltway.

  “Photoshopped?” I asked Kang, studying the photo.

  “Real,” Kang said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know.”

  “Who gave you this picture?”

  “You know I cannot tell you, Logan.”

  “At least tell me when was it was taken.”

  Kang shrugged evasively.

  “I don’t understand. Why did you show this to me, Kang?”

  “Walton knows Hollister. Hollister knows Walton. They are tight.”

  “You mean, they were tight.”

  Another shrug.

  “Are you saying Congressman Walton was involved in Hollister’s murder?”

  “All I am saying,” Kang said, snatching the photo and returning it to the safe, “is that the world’s a crazy place, man.”

  I followed him out of the storeroom. “Let’s recap. I asked you if you thought Birch, the animal rights guy, killed Hollister. Next thing I know you’re showing me a picture of Hollister and Walton getting down and funky with their bad selves at 30,000 feet. I want to know why.”

  “Walton’s not a good guy,” Kang said. “Big-time phony baloney.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Kang stopped to grab an apple from a bin near the cash register. “He comes in one time. Shakes my hand. Wants my vote. I tell him, ‘Buy some candy. I vote for you.’ He just laugh.”

  “Did you know Roy Hollister?”

  “Hollister’s a customer. Everybody in Rancho Bonita’s a customer.”

  “Why did you show me that picture?”

  “You asked.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “OK. OK, I forget maybe. I get old.”

  My Korean friend was easily ten years younger than I was. He was as sharp as they come.

  “OK, let’s presume the picture’s real. Grounds for divorce? Absolutely. And, in Walton’s case, probable cause for political suicide. But why would Walton want to kill the guy?”

  “You not listening to me, Logan. I never said Walton killed anybody.”

  “But you have your suspicions. Otherwise you wouldn’t have shown me that picture. I want to know why.”

  He bit into his apple. “Your coffee is getting cold,” is all he said.

  A high school girl who couldn’t have been fifteen, all acne and braces, came in and asked for a pack of Camels—for her uncle, she insisted.

  “Smoking’s bad for you,” Kang said, “smoking kill you. Come back when you’re eighteen. And shut the door on your way out. A/C not cheap.”

  “Who gave you the photograph, Kang?” I asked after she left. “Somebody who has it in for Walton, right?”

  He looked past me to the street beyond, chewing his apple slowly, saying nothing. Through the front windows of his market, I could see heat waves shimmering off the sidewalk.

  “OK, just answer me this,” I said. “Was it blackmail?”

  “Blackmail?” Kang finished his apple and tossed the core in a trash can under the counter, squinting at me. “What are you talking about, Logan?”

  “I’m talking about Roy Hollister and Pierce Walton getting busy in the back of Hollister’s Citation with three babes who I’m pretty sure are not their wives. Walton serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. What if Hollister wants Walton to use his contacts on the committee to get him special permission to take his clients hunting on some off-limits game preserve in Bongo Congo or somewhere? Walton tells him forget it, the press would have a field day if they found out he abused his office like that. Hollister gets pissed, threatens to go public with his firsthand knowledge of the congressman’s airborne sexual escapades. Walton knows that would be the end of his political career so, boom, Hollister catches one in the head. The wife’s with him so she catches one too.”

  Kang was still squinting. “You know what I think, Logan?”

  “I never know what you’re thinking, Kang.”

  “I think you watch too many movies.”

  “Only if they’re about Franz Kafka,” I said.

  FEW PEOPLE can truly maintain a confidence. There is power in knowing the unknown, and p
ower by its very definition must be exercised. It’s why conspiracies typically don’t remain conspiracies for very long, because somebody always swears somebody else to secrecy, who then spills the beans. Kang was hardly one of them. People felt comfortable confiding in him in the same way they did their bartenders or hair stylists— because they knew he could be trusted not to blab. That’s why he’d stashed that photo in his floor safe: because someone had asked him to. I knew that Kang would never tell me who that someone was unless he was told he could.

  There was the possibility, I realized, that Kang had secreted the photo for his own purposes—an insurance policy. One doesn’t keep something potentially so inflammatory, and dangerous, unless he fears that he might have to use it one day to defend himself. From what or whom, however, I had not a clue. Why then had he felt compelled to show me the photograph? Walking home from his shop, sipping my now-cold coffee, I struggled to make some sense of it all.

  Kang knew I was ex-military. We shared that bond. He also knew, given our many previous conversations, that part of my career had been spent working in an intelligence capacity. I had never shared with him the specifics of that assignment, my tour with Alpha, but I wondered if perhaps what had prompted Kang to show me the photograph was his knowledge of my background and his assumption that I was a capable investigator. Was he trying to get me to dig through Rep. Walton’s dirty laundry? If so, why?

  I would’ve been the first to admit that the notion of Walton having played a role in the deaths of Roy Hollister and his wife was preposterous. Sitting members of Congress, regardless of their shady reputations or after-hours proclivities, normally are not inclined to go around murdering people. Still, if I’d learned anything in my years stalking killers from the air and on the ground while drawing a government paycheck, it’s that once you rule out the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how seemingly preposterous, must be the truth. Whether that truth ultimately implicated Congressman Pierce Walton—or anyone else for that matter—was not a pursuit I was particularly interested in taking up.

  Gil Carlisle had asked me to help assess whether his nephew, the suspected murderer, was worthy of top-flight legal representation. Nothing in my having agreed to get involved on that basis said anything about me dealing with additional complexities—especially on a morning as oppressively hot as this one.

  It was not yet 0700 and already the world felt like it was on fire. The heat brought me back to Mosul and Kandahar and a hundred other hellholes I’d flown over or rucked across. The primary difference was that nobody was shooting at me— that and the fact that in Afghanistan and Iraq, one never sees two young women bicycling past them in straw hats and halter tops while walking to their truck. One of them gave me a smile.

  America. What a concept.

  IN Los ANGELES the previous evening, British-born Grant Kessler, president of the nation’s largest, most militant animal rights organization, Creatures United, had held a news conference at the group’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters in which he hailed Dino Birch as a hero. I listened to a snippet of it on NPR while driving home.

  “Roy Hollister most decidedly deserved to die,” Kessler said. “Mr. Birch obviously is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But if he did, indeed, shoot that monster, he should be given a medal. I only wish I had been the one who’d pulled the trigger.”

  What kind of lunatic would say such things publicly? Kessler, a bloated, bombastic former Broadway stage actor, had developed a certain notoriety over the years for his outrageous comments, and sometimes stunts, in defense of animals, but this, I thought, was beyond the pale. I turned off the radio.

  My shirt was soaked through by the time I opened the front gate and reentered Mrs. Schmulowitz’s tiny backyard. I’d forgotten my phone. I wanted to take it with me when I drove to the Rancho Bonita County Jail so I could call Carlisle afterward to tell him what I’d learned, then return to my normal routines. My chances of getting in to see his nephew under the circumstances, I realized, were slim, but I was compelled to try. At least the jail would be air-conditioned.

  I’d latched the gate behind me and had turned toward the garage when I saw that the side door that functioned as my front door was cracked open a few inches. I remembered locking it when I left to go see Kang.

  Quickly and quietly, I advanced at a low crouch. Whoever was inside my apartment seemed not to have heard or seen me. Pressing my back against the stucco-covered wall, I stopped to pick up a fist-sized edging stone, one of a row that Mrs. Schmulowitz had installed to protect her geraniums, and inched toward the door. As I did, I heard what sounded like the slide of a pistol being pulled back and a round being chambered.

  Somebody was inside my place. And he was armed.

  FOUR

  Kiddiot and I have known each other more years than I care to admit. In all that time, excluding those occasions when he was nice to my landlady, who regularly fed him carefully prepared dishes made of chopped chicken liver, I couldn’t recall a single instance in which he’d ever done anything that could remotely be construed as beneficial to anyone. Mostly he just took up space. But as I stood there against the garage wall, debating whether to go barreling in and surprise the gunman inside with the rock I clutched in my hand, Kiddiot swung into action. He climbed down from the oak tree, jumped the final few feet, and, with his tail pointed up, padded straight into the garage.

  A classic tactical diversion. Nice work, cat.

  Counting silently to myself—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—I was about to make what professional door kickers refer to as a “dynamic entry” when I heard a woman’s voice squeal gleefully inside.

  “Kiddiot!” she said with obvious delight. “What’ve you been up to, my little muffin?”

  “Hold your fire,” I said, tossing the rock outside the door. “I’m coming in.”

  “Logan, is that you?”

  Dark-haired, dark-eyed Alicia Rosario was cross-legged on my bed, her sandals kicked off on the floor, next to her oversized, white leather purse. Kiddiot was purring in her lap, getting his ears scratched with sculpted fingernails painted the color of cherries.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “Oh wait, you already did.”

  Alicia smiled. She was dressed in khaki slacks, a tank top, and an untucked, unbuttoned black silk blouse. Her holstered .40-caliber Glock and gold San Diego County deputy sheriff’s star sat on the upturned orange crate that passed for my nightstand.

  “You weren’t here,” she said, “so I let myself in.”

  “By picking my lock?”

  “Well, Logan, as Mick Jagger once said, ‘Every cop’s a criminal, and all the sinners, saints.’ ”

  “You’re way too young to be quoting Mick Jagger, Alicia.”

  Another smile. Her cleavage glistened with perspiration. I felt the urge to lick it.

  We’d met three years earlier in San Diego, where I had been hired to do some freelance work for a fellow former air force pilot. The attraction between us was undeniable. The stumbling block was that I was trying to reconcile back then with my ex-wife and had essentially put Alicia on hold. Much in my life had obviously changed since. Though we saw each other as often as two people can when they live in cities 200 miles apart, I was hardly prepared to call her my steady squeeze. I was certain she felt the same way about me. Neither of us, however, could deny there was something potentially promising between us.

  Kiddiot jumped off as I sat down on the bed beside her.

  “So what were you doing in here, getting ready to bust a cap in me or what?”

  “Bust a cap in you? You’re dating yourself, Logan. Nobody says that anymore.”

  “OK, you were fixing to clip me. To gank me. Whatever. You were racking a round. I heard it, out in the yard.”

  “Actually I was clearing the chamber. I don’t like leaving a live round in there when my gun’s not on me. Too easy for some little kid to sneak in and squeeze one off.”

  “I
have no kids, Alicia.”

  “I’m just saying. Firearms safety at all times, you know?”

  “Copy that.”

  Savannah was pregnant when she died. Alicia’s mention of children brought it all back, the surreal horror, the grief that consumed me as I stared down at her naked body in that cold ditch. I quickly covered over the memory with thoughts of my own gun, a .357 Colt Python, a souvenir from my years with Alpha. I generally kept the little snub-nose revolver under my bed.

  “You seem distracted,” Alicia said, rubbing my shoulders.

  “Do I?”

  “What’re you thinking about?”

  “Nothing—other than what a pleasant surprise it is to see you and what a complete mess I must look like.” My sweat-covered neck felt like somebody was dripping warm water down it. “Sure is getting hot in here.”

  “Not as hot as it could be.” She leaned over and kissed me.

  “So, Detective Rosario, to what do my cat and I owe the pleasure of your unexpected presence?”

  “I bought you something.”

  She reached under my pillow like she couldn’t wait and handed me what looked like a compact music disc gift-wrapped in bright red “Happy Kwanza!” paper.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure Kwanza comes after Christmas, and Christmas isn’t for months yet.”

  “It was the only paper I could find.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Aren’t you gonna open it?”

  I undid the paper with my thumb, revealing a two-disc set entitled, “Zen Serenity.”

  “Find serenity and a sense of well-being while exploring relaxing, Zen-inspired compositions,” I said, reading aloud the description printed on the cover of the box.

  Alicia sat beside me, waiting expectantly for me to say something else like, “What a kind, thoughtful gift,” only I was too engrossed in the goofy names of the songs listed on the back. From “Pebbles on the Pond” and “Perception of Oneness,” to “Emanating Light” and “Secret Places,” I couldn’t decide which tune title sounded cheesiest.