Fangs Out (22 page)

“My bad. There were no cops. Must’ve been wishful thinking on my part.”

Tires screeched. I glanced over as the red Civic parked in the south lot raced away, date night ruined.

Sorry, kids.

I scooped up Bunny’s pistol and his cousin’s Mac-10, and counted five bullet holes stitched in the Escalade’s roof. I had no clue how I was going to explain them to Enterprise. Then I called Detective Rosario.

L
I’L
S
INISTER
hunkered silently in the backseat of a San Diego Police Department black and white. I stood with Rosario and Lawless watching paramedics load Bunny the Human Doberman into an ambulance. He was screaming how it’s against the rules of human decency to handcuff a man with a fractured wrist and broken nose.

“Stop whining like a little girl,” Rosario said to him, “and be a man.”

“Eat me, bitch!”

Rosario shrugged him off. “I’m a cop,” she said to me, smiling. “You get used to it.”

Lawless was convinced that with the arrests of Bunny and Li’l Sinister, the investigation of Janet Bollinger’s homicide was all but complete. There was little left to do, he said, beyond tying up a few loose threads before presenting the case, heavy with circumstantial evidence, to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office.

I wasn’t so sure.

“What was their motive?”

Rosario and Lawless both looked at me.

“What reason would these two clowns have had to kill Janet Bollinger?”

“You’re a pilot, Logan, and obviously not a very good one, considering you nearly got us killed,” Lawless said. “How about leaving professional law enforcement work to the professionals?”

“Janet Bollinger’s purse was missing from her apartment, along with a few other valuables,” Rosario said. “I’m sure we’ll find things when we execute search warrants.”

“Bunny said he had nothing to do with it.”

“Wow,” Lawless smirked. “An innocent suspect. That’s gotta be a first.”

I told the detectives what Bunny told me, how Janet Bollinger had telephoned attorney Dowd to say she had to get something off her chest about her testimony during the Munz trial, and how Dowd had dispatched Bunny to go meet with her.

Lawless checked his watch like I was keeping him from more important duties. “What’s your point, Mr. Logan?”

“My point is that maybe you should go talk to Dowd, the attorney.”

“Maybe we just will.”

He walked back to his unmarked cruiser while a tow truck pulled into the parking lot and backed up to Li’l Sinister’s Chevy. The truck driver hopped out in grimy coveralls and began hooking up the car.

“How’s your plane?” Rosario said.

I pantomimed crocodile tears. She smiled sympathetically.

“You know, one thing I’m wondering,” Rosario said, “is how these two jokers were able to track you down.”

“Bunny knew I was doing some work for Hub Walker. He digs up Walker’s address, establishes eyes-on, then waits until he thinks he has an advantage before engaging the target. I made it too easy for him, spaced out on my counter-surveillance measures.”

“How do you know counter-surveillance measures?”

“I watch too much TV.”

Her sideways look said she didn’t know whether to believe me or not.

“Well, anyway,” Rosario said, “I’m just glad you got ’em. Makes my job easier. Flying out to Arizona would’ve been a giant time suck.”

“One’s allotted life span is not disallowed the time one spends in the sky.”

“Heavy. You just make that up?”

“Me? Nah, I read it in a men’s room at the San Francisco airport.”

Rosario smiled and stroked the side of her neck. “You married, Logan?”

“Was.”

“Me, too. Twice.” There was a pause, then she said, “Been forever since I got laid.”

Two offers to get busy with two different women in the same night. The last time that happened to me was . . . well, I couldn’t remember the last time. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t harbor fleeting fantasies of spending the evening with a woman stripped naked down to her badge and shoulder holster. But I had a lot on my mind. Too much, in fact. I shoved my hands in my back pockets and watched as a twin-engine King Air flew by, pretending that Rosario’s invitation, like the airplane, had gone right over my head.

“Well, that was awkward,” she said with an embarrassed smile.

I wanted to tell her about Savannah. But that would’ve required me to think about Savannah, which I’d already spent way too much time doing.

Her partner flashed the cruiser’s headlights impatiently.

“You’ll have to come back down for the prelim,” Rosario said.

“We’ll grab lunch.”

“I’d like that.”

Lawless tapped his horn. “Time to go.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Rosario said and began walking.

I didn’t doubt she would.

Bunny Myers was still screaming injustice as the ambulance transporting him drove out of the park.

M
IDNIGHT WAS
long gone by the time the giant cross atop Mt. Soledad faded from view in the Escalade’s rearview mirror. The odds of finding a decent Mexican restaurant serving at that hour anywhere in the San Diego area were minimal. Rolling down Mission Boulevard through Pacific Beach, I spotted a Taco Bell that was still open for business. It would have to do.

I maneuvered the Escalade into the empty drive-through lane and stopped at the sign where you decide what you want to eat. It didn’t matter what I wanted because there’s really no difference from one menu item to the next at Taco Bell. There’s a big machine in the back that cranks out what looks like
gorditas
and
chalupas,
but it’s all really essentially the same stuff.

“Welcome to Taco Bell. May I take your order?” She sounded Hispanic and young.

“I’d like two Burrito Supremes and a small iced tea, please.”

“Would you like some cheesy nachos with that?”

“Only if they come with an all-expense-paid trip to the cardiac care unit.”

“Did you say yes on the nachos?”

“That’s a big negative on the nachos.”

She gave me my total. I pulled forward to the window and handed over a ten-spot. Giving me back my change, she noticed the bullet holes stitched in the SUV’s roof and cocked a tweezed, pencil-thin, nineteen-year-old eyebrow that said, “Like, what the hell are
those
?”

“If you’re a fan of the Cadillac Escalade, you’ll notice that this happens to be the Tupac Shakur Signature Edition. Bullet holes come standard.”

She smiled nervously, handed me my supper-in-a-sack and quickly slid her window closed.

I ate on the drive back to Hub and Crissy Walker’s house—checking this time, repeatedly, to make sure I wasn’t being tailed. It dawned on me as I polished off the second burrito, mystery meat and sour cream glopping in my lap, that I’d forgotten to check in with Mrs. Schmulowitz to find out how her tummy tuck had gone. Too late to call. I’d ring her up in the morning. Maybe she’d have news about Kiddiot. I hoped they were both OK.

My plan was to catch a few hours’ sleep back at the Walkers’ guesthouse, secure the $5,000 Hub still owed me, and be on my quasi-merry way. I’d make arrangements to have the
Ruptured Duck
transported by truck, then hop a train back up to Rancho Bonita. All of the money I got from my work in San Diego, I knew, would likely go to paying the difference between the actual costs to repair the
Duck
and what my insurance was willing to cover. Without an airplane at my disposal, I couldn’t instruct others to fly, and without students, I had no regular income other than my monthly pension check from Uncle Sugar. How I’d keep the lights on once I got home was a question I wasn’t prepared to answer.

The feeling lingered deep in my stomach, along with two Burrito Supremes, that there had to be a connection between the execution of the man convicted of murdering Hub Walker’s daughter, Ruth, and the stabbing death of Ruth’s former romantic rival, Janet Bollinger. I didn’t know what that connection was, but I found it hard to believe that Bunny Myers was the linchpin. Yes, he was unhinged. Yes, he had a hair trigger. Yet I had derived nothing from his body language or words as he held me at gunpoint to suggest anything other than the fact that he was being truthful when he claimed no involvement in Bollinger’s death.

All the same, I remained conflicted by a gnawing sense that Hub Walker
did
know something he wasn’t saying. Whatever it was, however, I wasn’t particularly keen on finding it out. Walker was a living legend. The world needs its legends. What it doesn’t need is people like me poking holes in them. As far as I was concerned, the sooner I left San Diego, the better. I’d be doing the world a favor. The people of earth could thank me later.

There was still the matter of who’d sabotaged the
Duck.
Driving back to La Jolla that night, my desire to hunt down and punish the culprit took on phantasmagoric overtones as I fantasized over what I would do to him. Carve out his lungs? Play “Lord of the Dance” on his face wearing golf spikes? I don’t dance and I don’t play golf.

It would have to be lungs.

First, though, I had to find him.

Thirteen

T
he mockingbird’s repertoire was impressive. I’ll give him that much. He sang all night perched on a telephone wire outside the window of the Walkers’ guesthouse, belting out tunes like the feathered incarnation of Frank Sinatra. Sleep amid his serenade was impossible. I finally gave up as dawn approached, did a few push-ups and crunches, took a shower, changed into clean clothes, and waited for the kitchen lights to come on in the main house.

Many Buddhists striving to become one with the universe meditate in the early morning when their minds are not yet cluttered with the trivial concerns of the day that lies ahead. I sat on the edge of the bed, closed my eyes with my hands loose in my lap, and tried to calm my mind and body, starting with my toes. But all I could think about was that stupid bird, crooning out his talented yet annoying heart. At 6:15, the kitchen door flew open and Hub bolted outside in his robe and slippers, waving his arms and yelling, “Hey!”

The feathered Sinatra flew away.

“If I sang that well, I wouldn’t be giving flying lessons,” I said as I exited the guesthouse, “I’d be working the main room at Caesars Palace.”

Hub rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “You want some coffee?”

“Need
is more like it.”

I followed him inside and took a seat at the kitchen table while he loaded the coffeemaker with grounds and water. Neither of us spoke. It was still too early.

“Heard you come in last night,” he said after awhile. “Out on the town, were we?”

“Something like that.”

He got out two cups and a quart of milk from the refrigerator. “Hope you don’t mind skim. Crissy won’t let me have real milk.”

“Skim’s like water with a little white in it. I’ll take it black.”

I told him that the sheriff’s department had arrested two suspects on suspicion of murdering Janet Bollinger.

“I heard,” Walker said.

“How’d you hear?”

“A little bird told me.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder and winked enigmatically. The coffeemaker hissed. Hub leaned his elbows on the counter and watched the ebony liquid stream into the carafe.

“Played golf with Greg Castle yesterday,” he said.

“So I heard.”

“He won’t go public with that paternity test he took. Says it would embarrass his family. He did tell me, though, he gave some thought to what you said, about an independent audit. He agrees it’d help prove his company wasn’t stealing from the government, like Munz said they were.”

“Good deal. Then I’ll just collect the rest of my money and be on my way.”

Hub looked over at me again. “What money?”

“The other five grand I’m still owed.”

“I don’t owe you nothin’,” he said sternly. “I said I’d pay you the other five after you dug up something to give the newshounds, to get ’em off Greg’s back. You didn’t do that.”

Anybody can get bent out of whack when the bills come due. But it was the degree of Walker’s vehemence that seemed out of character. For a man with an otherwise amiable, slow-to-boil disposition, he was being rather loutish.