Something for Nothing (25 page)

But, he explained, she'd been pissy. First she said she wasn't hungry, and then that the food wasn't any good, even though the little diner in Walnut Station had always been her favorite place. Martin was just about to tell Ludwig how she'd said he was boring and wanted to leave, which ended up with him yelling at her right there in the diner. But before he could get the last part of the story out (the dramatic part, which was actually kind of funny, he knew)—he saw the black Camaro pull into the parking area out in front of the office.

“What's wrong?” Ludwig said, following his gaze. “Who is that?”

“Nothing,” Martin said. He stood up from his desk and put his hands on his hips. “Or nothing's wrong, I mean. This is the guy I told you about. The drug detective. The one who came by here before—from the plane that crashed up in Humboldt County.” He stood there looking out the window, waiting for Slater to emerge from his car.

“Really?” Ludwig said. He swung his legs off of his desk and leaned forward, peering out through the plate glass window. “What's he doing here now?”

Martin looked at Ludwig, then back out at Slater's car. “How the fuck do I know what he's doing here?” he asked. “He wants to crawl up my ass again, I guess. Or up our asses. See if we've sold any more drug planes.”

Ludwig sat there, looking out the window at Slater. “But we haven't sold
any
planes,” he said. “Tell him that. Tell him to send some drug smugglers our way and we'll sell them some planes—and then we'll turn them in to him. How about telling him that?”

Martin watched as Slater got out of his car and took a long, patient look around the lot. He had the same basic outfit as the last two times he'd seen him—jeans, T-shirt—but he was also wearing sunglasses—aviators—which Martin found both irritating and intimidating.

It was just over a week since his second trip to Mexico. Had the drugs hit the market already? Had there been a sudden wave of heroin overdoses caused by an extra-potent shipment of Mexican brown (or a bad shipment, one laced with rat poison or some other horrible substance)? That was the kind of thing that would happen on TV: the shipment trickles down to the streets, and the dedicated cop starts sniffing around, following leads, turning up the heat.

Fuck, Martin thought. He stood there watching Slater look around.

“Jesus,” Ludwig said. He stood up now, too. “Look at him. He really does look like a narco guy, doesn't he?”

T
HEY SAT ON THE
vinyl-cushioned couches in the waiting area by the big front window. Linda had picked them out—the couches and the round coffee table (she had also picked out the big plastic plants between the two couches). She said the couches had a nice modern look that went with the building, and that the off-white color would brighten the place. Plus, the vinyl was easy to clean. Martin agreed they looked good, but they weren't very comfortable. The cushions were thin, and if you sat there for more than a couple of minutes you could feel the wooden frames jabbing at you. And the truth was that the white vinyl didn't clean off very well; there were coffee stains all over the cushions.

Slater had spread a couple of sheets of mug shots on the coffee table, and Martin and Ludwig were looking through them. That was why Slater had shown up: there was another guy they were looking at in connection with the Humboldt case, and he wanted Martin (and now Ludwig) to look at some more people, see if they recognized anyone.

“But the guy who bought that plane came in alone,” Martin said.

“I know,” Slater said. “But now we think that this might be a wider circle of people, and it looks like they might have another plane they're using. We tracked down some information about a series of flight plans someone filed up at the airport in Redding. And we think it might be this guy, the one connected to the Humboldt thing—you know, your guy. The guy who crashed.”

“And you want to know if one of these other guys bought a plane here, too,” Martin said.

Slater looked at Ludwig and pointed at Martin.

“Your boss is pretty sharp,” he said, smiling. “Nothing gets past him.”

Ludwig laughed, and he and Slater exchanged a look.

Jesus, Martin thought. Don't tell me these two are going to end up being pals.

It wouldn't surprise him. They were actually kind of similar. Both were somewhere in their mid- to late thirties, and both were kind of good-looking in that rough and tumble way women tended to like. But most of all, they both had that working-class thing going on—or that up-from-working-class thing. The whole “Sure, I'm white collar, but I'm not pretending to be anything I'm not” thing.

Martin decided to ignore them. He was tired of Jim Slater and his penchant for just showing up, uninvited. “What was the make of the plane?” he asked.

“Uh, hold on,” Slater said. He stood up and dug around in his front pocket, and then pulled out a folded-up piece of pink paper. Martin remembered that Slater had done something like this when he was at his house out in Walnut Station. Hadn't he pulled out a crinkled-up
piece of paper with information scribbled on it? It occurred to him that this seeming lack of organization was actually just a show—a pretend messiness, one that was intended to get guys like Martin to let their guard down.

“Okay,” Slater said. “It's a Piper Cherokee PA 32-300. That's what it says in the flight plan, anyway.”

“We've sold a couple of those in the past few years,” Ludwig said. “What year is it?”

Slater sat down and looked again at his little piece of pink paper.

“Nineteen sixty-seven,” he said.

Ludwig looked over at Martin. “Have we ever sold a sixty-seven three hundred?” he asked, a thoughtful look on his face. “That doesn't sound familiar.” He looked back at Slater. “I don't think so, but I'm not positive. Let me take a look.”

Martin watched as Ludwig jumped up and walked over to the three file cabinets by the coffee machine. He could tell that Ludwig was hoping to find out that the guy had actually bought the plane from Anderson Aircrafts. It was the same way Martin had felt at his house, just before identifying the guy in the mug shots. He'd wanted to be part of something exciting like that. An arrest, or a bust, or whatever.

But, he knew, he'd also wanted to please Slater. It was more than a little ridiculous. A guy shows up out of nowhere, flashes his badge, and the next thing you know you're doing everything you can to make him happy (or almost everything—Martin wasn't going to turn himself in just to score points with Slater, that was for sure). But there was something about Slater that made you feel that way. He was an alpha dog, the kind the other dogs in the pack gave over to: moved out of the way, averted their eyes, let him have first shot at the females in heat.

Martin looked at Slater and saw that he was looking back at him. He had that cocky half smile on his face, and Martin had the feeling he wouldn't mind sitting in the waiting area of Anderson Aircrafts all day long. Chatting and just generally being a nuisance.

Fucking hell, Martin thought. He didn't know what to say. Go away. I hate you.

He glanced over and saw that Ludwig had his head buried in the open drawer of a file cabinet. He was mumbling something, but Martin couldn't quite hear what.

“So where is this plane now?” Martin asked, mainly for the sake of having something to say. He knew Slater didn't know where the plane was. Moreover, he, Martin, didn't care where the plane was.

“Well,” Slater said. “If you'd asked me that question last week, I'd have told you that I didn't have a clue. But we just found out that David Little, the one who bought the plane from you guys here, actually owns a bunch of land out in Livermore. And we're thinking that it might be stashed out there somewhere.”

He looked at Martin and adjusted his sunglasses where they were perched on his head. They were tucked into his hair, and Martin felt a quick stab of jealousy as he thought about how careful he had to be when he did something like that—more than once, he'd pushed his toupee off balance doing that kind of thing.

Huh, Martin thought. Livermore wasn't that far from Walnut Station. You drove south to Pleasanton, where Val lived, and then east fifteen or twenty minutes. It wasn't as nice as Walnut Station or Pleasanton. Yes, the Rolling Stones had played out there, at the speedway, but it was mostly a bunch of hick ranchers who thought it was still 1950. So what was going on? Was everyone in the East Bay turning to drug smuggling?

“So why don't you just go out there and look around?” Martin asked. “You can do that if you want, right?”

Slater laughed. “Oh, we can do it, all right,” he said. “We're the police—we can pretty much do whatever we want. But the problem is that we're talking about a lot of land out there. He's got twenty-five hundred acres, or something crazy like that. And it's really hilly, or a lot of it is, anyway. Canyons and a lot of oak trees. We drove around for a while but it's just me and one other guy. There's only so much ground we can
cover. Plus, we don't have the right kind of car. My Camaro isn't exactly the kind of car you take up into the hills, you know.”

Martin was about to respond when Ludwig came back over from the file cabinets.

“Okay,” he said to Martin and Slater. He was holding a couple of file folders. Jesus, Martin thought. When I ask him to grab some files it takes at least half an hour.

“These are for the Piper Cherokees we've sold the past few years,” Ludwig said. “But I don't think we've sold a 'sixty-seven.”

He tossed the files onto the coffee table. Martin looked at the plain manila exteriors of the files and thought about the sheets of paper inside. Contracts. Personal-information forms. Bank statements. Loan applications. Tax returns. All the paper that made the wheels turn, and that left a clearly marked trail back to wherever it was that you were trying to hide. Maybe in a place like Mexico you could just sort of disappear into the ether, hop in your plane and vanish. Here, though, there was always a way to find you. Basically, once a guy like Slater started in after you, it was only a matter of time before he tracked you down.

“Thanks,” Slater said. But he didn't reach out to grab the files. Instead he just sat there, looking down at them. Martin felt as if he understood. Who wanted to go rooting through a bunch of old files? Plus, he had a feeling a guy like Slater was more interested in the action part of things, the rundowns and the shootouts. Sure, he'd been shot a couple of times, and he was semiretired out here in the suburbs. But Martin was willing to bet he still got off on that rush of adrenaline that came with the hot pursuit of the bad guy.

“Listen,” Slater said. “I have a question for you guys. This is gonna sound a little nutty, but just hear me out.”

He looked up at Ludwig, who was still standing there next to the couch, and then over at Martin.

“Okay,” Ludwig said.

Martin nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Let's hear it.”

“Well,” Slater said. He folded his arms and leaned back on the couch. “What would you guys think about flying me out there? You know, out to this guy's property in Livermore. Or out over this guy's property, I mean. So I could see what's going on. I mean, it's not very far, right? And maybe that way I can see something. You know, from up above.”

Martin stared at Slater. Had he really just asked to be taken up in one of Martin's planes? Why not just ask if he could join Martin for his next trip down to Mexico? It was almost as if Slater were yanking Martin's chain, trying to scare the shit out of him. Martin felt a panicked urge to jump up and flee—just jump in his car and start driving.

“Holy shit,” Ludwig said. “Do you really want to do that? That would be fantastic.” He looked at Martin, then back at Slater. He was smiling. “When could we do it? You'd be amazed what you can see from up above. If there's a landing strip in that area, you'll definitely see it.”

“Jeez,” Slater said. “I don't know. How about today? We can do it right now, as far as I'm concerned.”

Ludwig looked down at Martin.

“We don't have anything else going on, right, Martin? And you're right,” he said to Slater. “It's not very far at all. It's just over the hills, basically. I'll bet it's not even fifty miles.”

They both looked at Martin as he sat there. He knew he hadn't responded yet, and that he should say something. But he was speechless—tongue-tied. He was thinking of various delay tactics, and it was interfering with his ability to respond. We don't have any gas. Our insurance won't cover it. But he knew it was useless. And if he said he didn't want to do it at all, then Ludwig would say he could do it without him. Plus, the whole point was that he couldn't look unwilling.

And why should he be? They were looking for some clown who was moving marijuana from Humboldt County down to Livermore, not the two shadowy figures who were flying heroin up to Hayward from a small ranch located not far outside Ensenada, Mexico. Still, the notion that he'd go up in one of his planes with Jim Slater to look for a drug smuggler was a little absurd. More than a little absurd, in fact.

“What do you say, Martin?” Ludwig asked. “Are you up for it?”

Martin felt the energy start to drain out of him. It was like someone had unscrewed a tiny little cap, and now his energy, his ability to keep moving through each day, hoping that things would get better, was flowing out onto the ground. He didn't know how he was going to get through the next couple of hours.

“Hey,” he said, looking at Slater and then at Ludwig. He gave them a weak smile—knew it was weak, but it was the best he could do. “You know me. I say let's go get those motherfuckers.”

Slater laughed and then gave a little whoop. “All
right,
” he said. He had a big wide smile on his face. “Let's go catch some bad guys.”