Flat Spin (33 page)

He said he was speaking on behalf of Carlisle, who was concerned that my making “unfounded and inflammatory” inquiries in Echevarria’s death threatened to derail the oil deal with Tarasov in Kazakhstan.

“Neither Mr. Carlisle nor Mr. Tarasov appreciates you continuing to make these ridiculous inquiries,” Zambelli said, “and, quite frankly, neither do I. You will cease and desist, or Mr. Carlisle will have no choice but to demand reimbursement in full of the monies he paid you which, if you’ll recall, required you to do nothing more than very briefly apprise the police as to the nature of Mr. Echevarria’s employment history.”

“Please inform Mr. Carlisle I am in receipt of the court order issued by Judge Jablowme, and that I have filed it accordingly. Also please inform Mr. Carlisle that any and all monies paid me to date have already been expended on cheap wine and even cheaper women.”

“If you think this is a joking matter, Mr. Logan, I would advise you to think again. As you continue to cast outrageous aspersions on wholly innocent individuals in the death of Mr. Echevarria, including Mr. Carlisle and myself, you’re also interfering with an ongoing police investigation. And I can assure you, sir, we will not stand for it.”

“That is some mighty fine speechifying, Miles. Did you learn that at Harvard Law or watching
Law and Order
?”

I wasn’t sure if the connection was lost before or after he hung up on me.

E
mma Emerson arrived twenty minutes late for our rendezvous in the mini-mart parking lot on Phoenix’s west side. She was driving her late husband’s red Silverado. Though it was still daylight, I flashed my headlights three times to let her know it was me she was looking for, then got out and walked over.

She was an anorexic, fifty-something brunette in jeans and a goose-down vest, even though it was eighty degrees outside, and bulging, slightly misaligned green eyes that never quite met mine.

“Got any ID on you?”

I dug the driver’s license out of my wallet and held it up for her inspection. Resting on her lap was a nine-millimeter Beretta. A vintage Winchester carbine rode in a gun rack mounted on the inside of the truck’s rear window behind her, along with a .223-caliber Ruger survival rifle with a plastic laminate stock.

“I don’t remember Robbie ever saying anything about serving with Cordell Logan, no middle name,” she said, peering at my license photo. “Sounds like one of them made-up Hollywood names to me.”

“The studios made me change it. My real name’s Norma Jean Baker.”

She eyed me suspiciously without so much as a rumor of a smile. Grabbing a pack of unfiltered Camels from the truck’s center console, she eased one between her lips, fired it up with a match, and said, “I’m gonna ask you two questions. Get either one wrong, we’re done. Got it?”

“I just hope they’re true or false. I don’t do well on multiple choice.”

Tendrils of smoke shot out of her nose. “True or false: The standard-issue weapon of Alpha tactical teams was the MP-5 submachine gun.”

“There was no standard-issue weapon. Every man carried whatever he qualified on, as long as it shot standard NATO ammunition.”

If she was impressed, she didn’t show it.

“Second question: What name did my Robbie use in the field?”

“Herman Munster.”

She exhaled, openly relieved, and nodded approvingly. “Can’t be too careful who you’re dealing with these days.” She glanced over at Savannah’s Jaguar. “That your car?”

“Ex-wife’s car.”

“She must still love the hell outta you if she let you borrow a vehicle like that. You still love her?”

“All depends on how horny I am at the moment.”

Emma Emerson grinned. She was missing an upper incisor.

“The last honest man on earth,” she said. “Get in.”

W
e merged from I-10 onto the Agua Fria Freeway, heading north past half-built subdivisions, tan stucco and faux-Spanish tile structures, most of them abandoned amid the nation’s Great Recession. Emma rocked back in her seat to check her side view mirrors, then leaned forward over the steering wheel, scanning the skies above and ahead of us like she was looking for enemy aircraft.

“Want a beer?”

“Wish I could.”

“Suit yourself.”

She reached behind her seat without taking her eyes off the road and fished a Bud Light out of a red and white Igloo cooler. “Everything’s over at the house,” she said, “all the evidence of who killed my Robbie.”

She popped open the can.

“Why do you think he was killed?”

“Cuz they wanted him killed.”

“Who’s
they
, Emma?”

She glanced over at me “Who do you think? The government.”

Robbie Emerson had gleaned volumes about Alpha’s tactics, techniques and procedures—much of which he’d appeared to have shared with his wife. Knowledge of even Alpha’s name was classified TS/SCI back when the group was operational. So sensitive were its activities that even the Buddha would’ve required a full background investigation to be briefed. But that hadn’t stopped Emma Emerson from apparently learning all about Alpha from her late husband. She droned on and on about all the many classified missions in which he’d participated, and what an outstanding covert operator he’d been.

I asked her if he’d ever talked about Arlo Echevarria.

“All the time. Robbie loved Arlo. The only one who ever stood up for him.”

“Then you heard what happened to Echevarria.”

Emma looked over at me. “What’re you talking about?”

“Echevarria was killed. About a month and a half ago. Shot to death.”

“Jesus.” She gulped down half her beer. “Robbie called Arlo to tell him some Russians were out to get him. He called to warn Arlo.”

“When was this?”

“The night before they found him out in the desert. Don’t you see? They murdered Arlo to cover their tracks, just like they did my Robbie, just like they’re gonna do you. They know you know.”

“Know what, Emma?”

She didn’t answer, scanning the skies and checking her mirrors. We were doing ninety in the slow lane, passing cars on the right.

“You said ‘some Russians.’”

“Fuck the Russians! They’re in on it, too! They all are! You know who it was!” She reached behind her, steering with her right hand, trying to wrestle the Winchester out of the gun rack and nearly sideswiping a big rig hauling a load of sheetrock. “Take the rifle. Take it!”

I grabbed the Winchester out of the rack before she shot herself with it. Or me. She was straining forward in her seat, peering intently upward, through the windshield.

“There!” she said, pointing, “Right there! You see it? There it is!”

I followed her sight line to a Bell Ranger cruising at our eleven o’clock position, about 1,500 feet AGL, paralleling the freeway. “Channel 11 Action News” was emblazoned on the side of the helicopter’s fuselage.

“You mean the news chopper?”

“News chopper. Yeah, right.”

She veered violently off the freeway, ignoring the red light at the bottom of the off-ramp, and fishtailing onto Union Hills Drive, racing eastward. I could see the TV helicopter through the truck’s rear window. It continued to parallel the freeway, flying on a perpendicular course, away from us.

“Lost him.” She lit another cigarette with trembling hands. “God, that was close.”

I soon realized that the news helicopter wasn’t the only thing Emma Emerson had lost.

S
he lived in a two-bedroom mobile home across the street from the clubhouse in a treeless, sun-blanched trailer park on Scottsdale’s north side. Three deadbolt locks secured the corrugated aluminum front door. Robbie Emerson’s widow quietly put her ear to the door and listened with the pistol in her right hand, hammer back. Satisfied we weren’t walking into an ambush, she undid the deadbolts. I followed her inside.

Dozens of banker boxes filled with papers were heaped haphazardly atop each other almost to the ceiling, creating wobbly cardboard walls through which narrow passageways had been constructed like some sort of indoor corn maze. Newspapers and magazines and clothes and cartons of ammunition were piled on the furniture. There was nowhere to sit. The trailer reeked of tobacco and garlic.

“In here,” Emma said, sidestepping between walls of boxes and into the trailer’s cramped galley kitchen. She put the pistol on top of the refrigerator, snatched a half-gallon bottle of off-brand bourbon from a cupboard next to the stove and poured herself a glass. The kitchen table, barely big enough for two people, was crammed with boxes, files, and an old CRT-type computer monitor.

“You need to see this,” she said, sitting down at the table and typing.

I stood over her shoulder and watched. Black and white video appeared on the computer screen: a broad V-formation of lights in the night sky. I remembered seeing the same footage on the news years earlier. The Air Force said the lights were nothing more than flares dropped by military aircraft on a training exercise outside Phoenix, but hundreds of eyewitnesses insisted otherwise. What they saw that night, they said, was an enormous UFO.

Emma lit a fresh Camel. “That’s the alien mother spaceship,” she said, gesturing with her chin to the computer screen. “Where everybody took all those pictures of it was right near where those utility workers found Robbie. Same location. That’s why Robbie was killed. That’s why Arlo was killed. To keep them quiet because they knew all about the arrangement.”

“What arrangement would that be, Emma?”

“The reverse engineering stuff they’re doing at Area 51! I thought you said you were with Alpha. Jesus.”

Her late husband’s top-secret security clearance, she said, had afforded him detailed knowledge of hush-hush research programs that allowed scientists working for the Defense Department to parlay technology gifted by ETs into the development of technological advances ranging from Stealth bombers to longer-lasting light bulbs.

“Robbie knew things he wasn’t supposed to know, so they made it
look
like he killed himself,” Emma said. “They’re gonna kill you and everybody else who was ever with Alpha, just like they did him and Arlo Echevarria because they know you all know the truth.”

“You’re saying the aliens killed your husband?”

“Christ, do I have to spell it out for you? Not the aliens. They’re too smart for that. They make these big defense contractors hire professional killers, Russians, because they don’t want the public to know they’re all in cahoots.” She gulped some bourbon. “The CEOs of these companies, they’re making trillions of dollars, cashing in on all the tech transfer! The police won’t do nothing because they’re afraid they’ll get killed, too, just like my Robbie. So nobody says a word.”

“Did Robbie tell you all this?”

“He didn’t want to put me at risk. Far as he was concerned, the less I knew, the safer I’d be. But I figured it all out, believe me, the whole story. Mailed Arlo a book that lays it all out, the whole coverup, to protect him, because I knew how much Robbie respected him. But Arlo must not have read it, cuz if he’d of had any sense at all, he would’ve run for the hills before they got him.”

I asked her about the suicide note her husband had allegedly left behind.

“That wasn’t him that wrote it. The grays forged his handwriting to make it look like he’d killed himself.” She removed a sheet of paper from a file. “The police would only give me a copy. Said the original was evidence.”