Flat Spin (20 page)

S
avannah agreed to meet me that afternoon at a little café across the street from the Santa Monica Airport. The walls were decorated with pictures of classic airplanes and posters advertising old barnstorming movies, the kind of films in which rock-jawed flyboys in leather helmets and silk scarves always get the girl. My kind of place.

I tied down the
Duck
and made the three-minute walk to the restaurant.

Savannah was parked in a corner booth, behind her big designer shades.

“They make a mean mushroom burger here,” I said, sliding in.

“What’s so important, you had to see me right away?” she said.

I asked her about the diamond engagement ring.

“You flew all the way down here to ask me that?”

“You know me. Any excuse to fly.”

Savannah picked nervously at her lower lip. The busboy brought over menus and glasses of water. She waited until he moved off.

“Did Arlo tell you his ex-wife threatened to kill him?”

“He said it like it was a joke—‘She’s gonna put a contract out on me if I don’t give it back.’ I’m sure she was angry with him, just like I was. I probably said I was going to kill him, too. Heat of the moment, Logan. People say things. Arlo didn’t take any of it seriously. He knew it was just talk. Hell, I was afraid he might put a contract out on me for throwing the ring away after he told me where he got it.”

“Did you tell the police about any of this?”

“And waste their time? What for? Arlo wasn’t murdered because I threw away his ex-wife’s ring, Logan. He was murdered because of who he was, what he did. He was killed by a professional.”

I told her about reading Echevarria’s autopsy report and about the decidedly unprofessional way in which he was murdered. I said there was always a possibility the shooter had tried to look amateurish on purpose, to throw investigators off his trail, but that I doubted it.

“The killer didn’t conform to modern shooting doctrine,” I said.

“You worked in marketing. What would you know about ‘modern shooting doctrine’?”

“I read a lot.”

Savannah gazed scornfully at me with her sunglasses still on. She knew better.

The waitress was about fifty or so, a bottle blonde sausaged into blue jeans that housed a pair of hips nearly wide enough to land my airplane on. Savannah said she wasn’t hungry. My aspiring Buddhist impulses urged me to go with a salad, but my nihilistic past insisted otherwise. I ordered steak fries and a mushroom cheeseburger.

“I love a man who loves his meat,” the waitress said, jotting down the order. “Name’s Honey. Lemme know if you need
any
thing.”

Savannah watched her move off. “Honey my ass.”

“She knows a big tipper when she sees one.”

“You said you were a vegetarian.”

“I prefer to think of myself as more of a work in progress.”

“There’s this thing now, Logan, in case you haven’t heard. It’s called cholesterol.”

“I didn’t know you still cared.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe I do. Which is why I want you to stop.”

“We’re not married anymore, Savannah. If I want a mushroom cheeseburger, I’ll order a mushroom cheeseburger.”

“That’s not what I meant.” A helicopter flew low overhead, its engine rattling the restaurant like a minor temblor. Savannah waited. Then she said quietly, “I think my father may know something about Arlo’s murder.”

“What makes you think that?”

She shook her head, done talking about it. She took off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. They were rimmed red from crying.

“What’s wrong, Savannah?”

She sipped some water and put her sunglasses back on. “Had I known what I was getting you into, I never would’ve asked you,” she said. “Whatever my father paid you, I’ll double it. I just want you to go home. Forget about Arlo. Forget all about this.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. It’s easy. Just get back in your airplane and go.”

I couldn’t think of anything to tell her but the truth.

“Arlo saved my life once. I owe him at least this much.”

We were on Mindanao, the southern part facing the Sulu archipelago arching toward Malaysia. Negotiations between the

Moros and the government had broken down the week before. The Islamic Liberation Front was attacking government forces. Our mission was to kill every senior Moro leader we encountered. Through the palms fronting the shoreline outside Zamboanga City, I watched just after sundown as native fishermen in outrigger canoes cast their nets into a placid sea for sardines and eel, as they had done for hundreds of years. I was standing on a low bluff, the view reminding me of some South Pacific landscape Gauguin might’ve painted, when the first RPG came whooshing in. The warhead would’ve struck me square had Echevarria not tackled me a half-second before it hit. But I couldn’t tell that to his widow, my ex-wife. I’d sworn an oath. Some bonds are stronger than those between a man and a woman. That’s just how it is.

“How did Arlo save your life?”

I lied. “We were walking to lunch one day, crossing Mason. There was a cable car coming. I looked the wrong way and didn’t see it. He pulled me back right before I got run over.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”

“Must’ve slipped my mind.”

She gazed at me for a long moment, her lips pursed. Then she said, “Next time, tell a better lie,” then left to go to the restroom.

She never came back.

“Where’d your friend go?” Honey asked with more than passing curiosity when she brought me my burger a few minutes later. “She looked like she had a lot on her mind.”

“Her husband was shot to death. She wanted me to talk to the police about what I knew. Now she thinks her father might know something. She’s afraid I might be next. But I’m not worried. Wanna know why? Because the Buddha said that if you transcend love, you transcend worry, and if you transcend worry, you transcend fear.”

Honey laughed nervously. “Makes sense,” she said, like she suddenly realized she was waiting on a crazy person. “Catsup, mustard?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

She never came back either.

T
WELVE

T
he wife Arlo Echevarria abandoned to marry mine was herself remarried. Janice Echevarria’s second husband, Manila-born Harry Ramos, was a venture capitalist and liaison for several foreign-based energy companies doing business in North America. He was also nearly twenty years Janice’s junior. They lived atop Nob Hill in a Greek revival mansion with Italianate colonnades, surrounded by rolling lawns, a priceless collection of marble statuary and an enviably unobstructed view of San Francisco Bay. Janice showed me into her sun-splashed parlor. She wore an off-white pleated skirt that came midway down her calves, maroon spike pumps, a maroon cashmere turtleneck, and a sapphire brooch fat enough to choke my cat.

“How was your drive?”

“I flew up. Landed at San Carlos and rented a car.” I gave her my business card.

“That’s right. You’re a pilot.”

She gestured toward a matching pair of richly upholstered wing-back chairs. We sat. On the lamp table between us was a sterling silver coffee service with two bone china cups and a plate of chocolate-dipped biscotti.

“Cream and sugar?”

“Black, please.” I glanced around the room while she poured. “I remember when you and Arlo used to live in Oakland, up in the hills.”

Janice Ramos handed me a cup and saucer. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she said without a trace of remorse.

She had short dark hair and dark, deep-set Mediterranean eyes that flashed fire when she was angry, which was her default mode. Her narrow lips were perpetually downturned in what some men might describe as a sexy pout. Take away the mansion and fancy jewels, and she was still every inch the same shrew Echevarria traded up for my wife.

“Arlo never had any feelings for anybody other than himself,” she said, dipping a wedge of biscotti in her coffee. “You of all people should appreciate that fact. I mean, be honest, Logan. In all the time the two of you worked together, did he ever
once
mention me, or his son?”

“I’m sure on some level he cared for you both.”

“You obviously didn’t know him very well then.”

I’ve never understood how two people who once vowed to spend eternity together could grow so far apart that one or both of them would be glad to see the other planted six feet under. I asked her if she had anything to do with his death.

“I only wish,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine ever enjoying anything more.”

“I understand he stole a ring from you.”

“Not just a ring. My grandmother’s wedding ring.”

“You get divorced and six years later, you discover the ring missing? How does that work?”

“I didn’t realize he’d taken it until a couple of months ago. I was inventorying all my jewelry to update the insurance. We had a small safe deposit box I’d forgotten all about. The bank records showed that Arlo was the only person who had accessed the box.”

“Did you threaten to put a contract out on him?”

She stared at me hard. “Arlo Echevarria was a piece of filth. He lied to me. He lied to everyone he ever met. He was a worthless, conniving husband and a worthless, disengaged father. I mean, it tells you something when your own son hates you. I would’ve killed him myself, believe me, with my own hands, if I could’ve gotten away with it.”

“So you had somebody else do it for you.”

Janice laughed. “If I knew people like that, Logan, I’d take out half of Congress,” she said with a blunt candor that told me she was likely telling the truth, “and I wouldn’t stop there.”

She told me that she and her husband were visiting his family in the Philippines when they got the news. Someone from the LAPD telephoned in the middle of the night, a lady police officer—she didn’t catch the name—who apologized for calling so late and said it was her sad duty to inform Janice that her former spouse had met with apparent foul play. She told Janice she was sorry for her loss, to which Janice said she replied, “What loss?”

“She asked me if I had any idea of who might’ve shot him,” Janice said, licking chocolate from her little finger. “I told her I didn’t know and I didn’t care. Arlo was already dead to me, a long time before that.”

The officer asked as a matter of routine if Janice could vouch for her whereabouts in the days leading up to Echevarria’s death. She said she provided the names of each of her chauffeurs, cooks, gardeners, maids, corporate pilots and masseuse. All of them, she said, confirmed that she’d been abroad when Echevarria was gunned down. She even volunteered to take a polygraph some weeks later, which she said she aced. The same, she acknowledged, could not be said for their son, Micah.

“They gave him a lie-detector test and it came back ‘inconclusive.’ He was just nervous. The police knew that. Micah would never hurt anybody.”

“Not even the father he despised?”

“He had no use for his father, just like his father had no use for him. Quite frankly, Micah has no interest in how Arlo died, and neither do I.”

“Then why’d you agree to see me?”

She set her cup down on the coffee table and smoothed her skirt. “My husband’s away on a business trip for three weeks. I’m fucking bored.” The come-hither quality of her smile was the very definition of transparent.

“Where’d he go, your husband, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Kazakhstan. Looking at oil properties.”

“It’s all the rage,” I said. “Everybody used to go to Disneyworld. Now they go to Kazakhstan.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I should be going.” I stood.

Disappointed by my apparent lack of carnal interest in her, she turned with sagged shoulders and watched a freighter heading out to sea under the Golden Gate, its deck stacked five deep with multicolored cargo containers.

“I’d like to talk to your son,” I said.

“What for?”

“To see what, if anything, he might know about the circumstances of Arlo’s death.”

“I don’t know his current address. He was living somewhere in the East Bay last I heard. He moves around a lot.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have his cell phone number?”

She sighed, jotted the number on a slip of paper and handed it to me.

“I don’t approve of my son’s lifestyle,” Janice said, “but if you do see him, tell him I still love him.”

I
called Micah Echevarria later that morning. Before hanging up on me, he said he didn’t want to talk to me about his father or anything else. When I called him back to say I thought we’d been cut off, he told me to kiss off and hung up again. Whatever happened to telephone etiquette?

I drove across the Bay Bridge into Oakland and stopped for a late breakfast at the Full House Café on MacArthur Boulevard. I’d discovered the Full House years before while tailing an agent from a Middle Eastern country who’d gone there to meet with two Hezbollah operatives interested in acquiring stolen Army antitank missiles. I’d grabbed a seat at the counter—an electro-acoustic listening bud planted in my ear—and feasted on red hash made from beets and pork sausage while the Arabs negotiated a price for the missiles at a table near the window. After breakfast, I followed them to a self-storage yard across from the San Mateo County Fairgrounds where the rockets were stashed, then on toward Reno, where they intended to celebrate their deal by touring the local whorehouses. They never made it to Nevada. All three died when their rental car spun off an icy Donner Pass. The CHP called it brake failure. My supervisors called it a job well done.