Fangs Out (6 page)

T
HE
BANK
teller scrutinized Walker’s check with thinly veiled skepticism. She had false eyelashes and looked about twelve, which more or less matched the number of minutes I’d been waiting in line for my turn at her window.

“I may not look it,” I said, leaning closer and speaking in a low, conspiratorial tone, “but I’m posing online as a Nigerian prince. The sucker who cut me that check? I’ve got him convinced it’s seed money for an investment that’ll return ten million large.”

“This check is drawn on a bank in San Diego,” she said, like San Diego
was
Nigeria.

“OK, the truth,” I said, unable to stop myself, “I’m not really a Nigerian prince. I just found that check in the parking lot.”

“Excuse me a minute.” She locked her cash drawer with a key dangling from her neck and moved off twenty feet to consult her manager.

They spoke in hushed tones, shooting me questioning glances every few seconds. I assumed they would scrutinize the balance of my bank account, which was starting to resemble the federal deficit, and put a hold on the check for a couple of days until it cleared. No biggie. The manager came over. The hold, she said, would be a full week.

“That’s pretty standard banking practice for non-local checks in Nigeria,” she said.

She smiled, but not in the nice kind of way.

No one ever said being a smartass was without its drawbacks.

K
IDDIOT
WAS
still gone when I got home. At least he was consistent: a cat who never failed to disappoint. I stuffed some clean clothes into a duffel bag for the trip to San Diego, along with my toothbrush, then telephoned the five people on Hub Walker’s list.

My calls to prosecutor Stephen Tassio, Greg Castle of Castle Robotics, and Ruth Walker’s former co-worker, Janet Bollinger, went straight to voice mail. I left detailed messages for each.

Eric LaDucrie, the ex-Big Leaguer-turned-death-sentence pitchman, answered after about ten rings. He sounded like he was in a cocktail lounge. I could hear the tinkle of a piano somewhere behind him and people laughing, talking loud. I told him that Hub Walker had hired me to dig up dirt on Dorian Munz, and that I wanted to talk to him.

“I might be able to help you out,” the Junkman said, “only I’m in Washington. I’m back the day after tomorrow. Can it hold ’til then?”

I said it could and gave him my number.

My last call was to Munz’s defense lawyer, Charles Dowd. He sounded inner-city African-American and harried.

“My client has passed,” Dowd said. “The case was adjudicated. There’s nothing more to be said beyond that.”

“All I need is a half-hour of your time, Mr. Dowd. Just to clarify a few points.”

“You say you’re who again?”

“Cordell Logan. Hub Walker, the father of the young woman your client was convicted of killing, hired me to look into the case.”

“What exactly is it you’re looking for, Mr. Logan?”

“Your client, Mr. Munz, made certain allegations against Ruth Walker’s boss, Greg Castle, shortly before Munz was executed.”

“I’m well aware of those allegations. I believe I was there. You still haven’t answered my question.”

I explained how Hub Walker and Greg Castle were friends—something I was certain the attorney already knew—and that Walker hoped to help repair the damage done to Castle’s reputation by Munz’s spurious allegations.

“Mr. Walker would like me to gather a few statements from knowledgeable people who can affirm your client’s guilt in Ruth Walker’s murder. Mr. Walker would like to then pass those statements on to the news media in defense of Mr. Castle.”

“The jury,” Dowd said, “found the evidence against my client overwhelming. All of that evidence was introduced during proceedings in open court. All of those proceedings are available for your inspection in the office of the clerk of the court. Beyond that, again, there’s nothing more I can say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Logan, I have a preliminary hearing to prepare for.”

“I’m told Mr. Munz’s execution was televised.”

“All federal executions air on a closed video loop and are taped. No doubt so that the Justice Department can look back in perpetuity and enjoy their splendid handiwork.” The contempt in Dowd’s words was
prima facie.

I asked him if he had retained a copy of the tape in his files. He said he did. I asked if I could see it.

“Why do you want to see it?”

“To determine the specific allegations Munz made against Mr. Castle before he was put to death.”

“Go talk to the prosecution,” Dowd said. “I’m sure they’d be more than happy to help you.”

“I have a call in to Stephen Tassio.”

“Steve Tassio’s a world-class prick. He won’t call you back. You can petition the court for a copy of the tape if you want.”

“Mr. Dowd, you and I both know that could take months. I’m trying to salvage an innocent man’s reputation. Your cooperation would mean the world to the victim’s father and to the memory of his daughter. Please.”

The lawyer was silent for a long moment. Then he sighed. “I got two girls of my own. Youngest just graduated Howard.”

“You must be very proud.”

“I would be if she wasn’t living back home, driving my wife and me nuts. I’m trying to get her off my payroll and onto someone else’s. No easy task, Mr. Logan.”

I told him I could be at his office that afternoon.

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” Dowd said, and gave me the address. “Be here at two thirty.”

My next call was to Savannah.

“I’ll pick you up at the Santa Monica Airport in an hour, assuming that works for you. We’ll fly down to San Diego from there.”

“I’ve been having second thoughts,” she said.

“About . . . ?”

“Quite frankly, you.”

“Oh, here we go.”

“You seem conflicted about wanting to get back together, Logan. You say you want to give it another shot, but that’s not the vibe I’m getting.”

“Is this about Shamu?”

“Shamu?”

“You want to go to SeaWorld. I didn’t start doing cart-wheels over the idea, and now you’re punishing me.”

“If you’re suggesting that I’m exhibiting passive-aggressive behavior, or that I’m somehow being obstructionist as a means of retaliation, you’re mistaken. If anything, Logan, I’m employing a classic anticipatory coping mechanism to blunt what I perceive is your apparent reticence.”

“I have no idea what you just said, but I do have a suggestion.”

“I’m listening.”

“I think we should just sleep together. See how
those
coping mechanisms work.”

“I’m dealing with someone who’s still clearly in junior high.”

“Ah, yes, the old junior high scenario. OK,” I said, “you be the viceprincipal and I’ll play the unruly student who gets sent to your office in need of some serious
discipline.
It could be wildly entertaining.”

I waited for her to laugh. I might’ve even settled on a polite chuckle, but there was only silence.

“I just need a little time to synthesize things in my head, that’s all,” she said after a long moment.

At that moment, part of me wanted to fire a Sidewinder missile into whatever remained salvageable between us, to say something irretrievably hurtful and blow up the whole ugly mess, so that we would both have reason to walk away for good. The other part, arguably the better part, realized that when it came to my ex-wife, I was incapable of pulling that emotional pin, and probably always would be.

“If you want to retreat to neutral corners,” I said, “so be it.”

“I’ll call you, Logan.”

“You do that, Savannah.”

Click.

Something churned up bitter and hot from under my sternum and burned the back of my throat. I swallowed it down and started through the backyard, toward my truck, which was parked out on the street.

“Bubeleh!”

Mrs. Schmulowitz was sitting at her kitchen table, wearing her big round Liza Minnelli reading glasses, motioning me excitedly through the window to join her.

“I have something unbelievably exciting to tell you,” she said as I walked in.

“You found Kiddiot?”

“Not yet.”

I didn’t mask my worry well.

“He’ll turn up. You’ll see. I’ll make a nice brisket. That always gets him.”

“It always gets me.”

“So tell me something I don’t know.”

Her table was littered with color brochures from various cosmetic surgeons featuring photos of their handiwork—smiling young women in bikinis with radiant faces and flawless bodies. Rancho Bonita was loaded with them.

“So what’s the exciting thing you had to tell me, Mrs. Schmulowitz?”

She beamed. “I’m getting a tummy tuck!”

“Women your age don’t get their tummies tucked, Mrs. Schmulowitz. They get hip replacements and the senior discount at Denny’s.”

“Is that so? Well, how many women my age can do
this
?” She pushed back from the table, bent down with her palms planted on the floor and proceeded to do a handstand.

“I might get a little Botox while I’m at it, too, maybe a boob lift, the whole
schmear,”
Mrs. Schmulowitz said, the blood draining to her head, her spine crackling like a bowl of Rice Krispies. “Not many eligible bachelors left out there in my demographic. You can’t be too competitive these days, you know.”

“You don’t need cosmetic surgery, Mrs. Schmulowitz. You’re perfect just the way you are.”

She blew me a kiss standing upside down, then suggested delicately—to the extent that Mrs. Schmulowitz was capable of doing anything delicately—that I might want to think about having a bit of work done on my own increasingly furrowed features.

“Don’t get me wrong, Bubelah, you’re a total hotsy totsy,” she said, “but, let’s face it, none of us is getting any younger, with the possible exception of Joan Rivers. Now, you get a little filler, that schnoz of yours straightened out,
oy gevalt,
we’re talking total chick magnet.”

I might’ve taken her advice seriously, especially when it came to my sneezer which, no thanks to football and the occasional fist, resembled not so much a nose anymore as it did a geometry equation. But the dents and wrinkles one collects along the way chronicle a record of service and sacrifice, in my opinion, like ribbons earned in battle, each to be worn with pride. The last thing I wanted was a nose job.

“I appreciate the suggestion, Mrs. Schmulowitz, but I can barely afford cat food, let alone a new face.”

I helped her to her feet and departed through the back door. I whistled for Kiddiot but got no response. Not that he ever responded to me anyway. Stupid cat.

I was halfway to my truck when I realized I’d forgotten my duffel bag. Back in my garage apartment, I thought I heard him under the bed, but when I got down on the concrete floor and looked, it was only a blue belly lizard, the kind Kiddiot liked to bring inside to play with until he grew bored with them, then forgot. The little reptile skittered away, past my two-inch, .357 Colt Python, which I kept under the bed, within easy reach. Force of habit told me to take the snub-nose with me to San Diego, but for what purpose? Self defense? My days of bad guys were long behind me. If anything, my mission to America’s self-proclaimed “Finest City”—validating the innocence of a man falsely accused by a convicted murderer—sounded to me like a paid vacation. To vacation while armed, that was the question.

The Buddha saw no viable purpose in lethal weapons. Which explains why he was the Buddha. I see firearms as tools, as practical as any saw or drill; they can come in quite handy when bad people need killing. This difference of opinion served to underscore how many of the Buddha’s precepts, in my flirtation with them, did not come naturally to my Western military mind. How does a man prone to violence by nature and training embrace a religion that preaches peace above all else?

Kneeling there on the floor, my surgically reconstructed knee aching, I debated before forcing the Buddha’s teachings down like medicine, the taste of which you hopefully get used to. I stuffed the revolver between my mattress and box spring, then drove to the airport.

The Buddha, in this instance, had no idea what he was talking about.