Flat Spin (23 page)

The last line caught in Micah’s throat. He nodded off-camera and the screen went blank. Bad meter aside, it was a poignant reading.

Kids murder their parents. Ride little Timmy about taking out the trash and, instead of calling Child Protective Services to complain about how abused he is, Timmy takes matters into his own tiny hands and smokes you with the Luger that Gramps brought back from the war; the one you told him never to touch, the one you kept “hidden” in your nightstand with one round in the chamber because it’s every American’s inalienable right to keep a fully loaded, semi-automatic weapon within easy reach at bedtime, because you never know when the Krauts might decide to start another war. Or maybe Daddy walks out on little Timmy and Timmy’s mom. Resentments fester over the years. Little Timmy grows up. One night, he decides it’s finally time for a little payback, and puts three slugs in Daddy’s chest. It happens. But I doubted Micah Echevarria was little Timmy. If I’d learned anything in too many years hunting sociopaths in bad places, it’s that the culpable don’t usually post poems about their victims on YouTube.

I turned off the laptop and got back in bed. Savannah never stirred. Somewhere around four a.m., I drifted off. I don’t remember what I dreamed about.

T
here was a cocktail lounge in West Hollywood called the Wet Spot I remembered from my operational days, a sultry, intimate haunt with red-leather booths, where former apparatchiks mixed indistinguishably with Russian organized crime and Israeli mafia types, blowhards all with unbuttoned silk shirts and bulging crotches, who eagerly ordered $100 shots of Stoli if it meant impressing the Eurotrash starlet they were hoping to bang that night. The bar’s owner was a charming, heavyset thug named Gennady Bondarenko who, before seeking asylum at the U.S. embassy in Madrid, worked diplomatic cover for the main intelligence directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff. He also happened to be related by marriage to Laz, my old shooting instructor from Alpha, which is how I first met him. Bondarenko was seemingly on a first-name basis with just about every disaffected former Soviet citizen living on the West Coast. I decided to drive down that afternoon from Rancho Bonita to see what, if anything, he could tell me of Pavel Tarasov.

Mrs. Schmulowitz insisted first on serving us breakfast at her kitchen table in honor of my “sister’s” visit. There were scrambled eggs cooked with onion and smoked salmon, and bagels from the only bakery in Rancho Bonita that made them fresh daily. I tried to explain that Savannah wasn’t really my sister, but Mrs. Schmulowitz was too intent explaining why California bagels were such
schlect
compared to their New York counterparts.

“I’m telling you, it’s the water,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, a small glob of cream cheese clinging to the corner of her mouth. “People make jokes about New York water. Go ahead. Laugh. But they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. The United Nations took a vote. New York water is the best—the BEST, period. End of story. You can look it up but why bother? I’m telling you!”

Savannah said she couldn’t remember ever having eaten more delicious eggs. Mrs. Schmulowitz said she couldn’t remember my ever having mentioned a sister—then observed that Savannah and I bore absolutely no familial resemblance.

“Could be your mother knew the milkman,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said with a wink. “It’s very possible she didn’t have enough money to pay the bill for the milk. Maybe the milkman gave her a little break if you know what I mean and I think you do. Hey, I give you some milk, you give me some ‘sugar.’ I’m not saying it occurred, yes or no, but it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Savannah put down her coffee cup. “Well, actually, Mrs. Schmulowitz—”

“I myself enjoyed such an arrangement during my second marriage,” Mrs. Schmulowitz confided, cutting her off. “He should’ve been a movie star, this milkman. Talk about biceps. Carrying all those milk bottles up and down all the stairs all day? We took one look at each other and all of our clothes suddenly disappeared. It was off the charts. Sometimes, these things happen. What can I say?”

Savannah nodded and tried not to smile. I started to say that we really needed to be going, when Mrs. Schmulowitz’s chest began ringing. She reached into her sports bra, got out her cell phone, and answered it.

“Hello? . . . Who? . . . Arnie! Hello, my love, one minute.” Her eyes lit up and she cupped her hand over the phone. “It’s my son, the doctor—well, he’s not really a
doctor
doctor. Not the kind that does hysterectomies. He’s a teacher, a professor of history. The greatest. Will you excuse me, dears?”

“Of course,” Savannah said.

“Arnie,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said into the phone. “How are you, doll? Is everything OK?”

I cleared the table and Savannah washed the dishes while Mrs. Schmulowitz lost herself in happy conversation with her only child.

They were still chatting and laughing by the time we left.

F
OURTEEN

“I
always wanted kids,” Savannah said. “Probably too late now.”

“You never said anything about wanting kids when we were together.”

“You just weren’t listening, Logan. Six years, I never heard
you
say a word about wanting a family.”

I checked my side view mirror again. Nobody on our tail. We were on the 101, heading toward Los Angeles, the Pacific to our right. Savannah was driving. Traffic was light. The Jag was pushing eighty. I leaned my power leather seat back and watched a pod of at least twenty dolphins swimming parallel to the shoreline.

“Arlo didn’t want more kids,” she said. “He said one was enough for him.”

The thought of Savannah having a baby with Arlo Echevarria, or anyone else for that matter, made my stomach cramp. She was right about one thing, though: I was no family man. The instincts just weren’t there. Maybe it was because of how I grew up, the lack of role models, shunted among foster parents after the oncologist told my mother that there was nothing more he could do for her. My father was long gone by then. For years, I’d kept a photo of him in an old cigar box, a Polaroid snapshot of a young, unsmiling soldier on border duty in West Germany that came with the one and only birthday greeting he ever sent me. “Money’s tight,” it said, “times are hard, here’s your stupid birthday card.” I was eight. Not that I’m making excuses for myself. I just didn’t care to be a father. I didn’t know how to be one. And, apparently, given how his own son turned out, neither did Arlo Echevarria.

“You should be grateful you didn’t have a kid with that guy,” I said. “He was an abysmal failure at fatherhood.”

“And I suppose you wouldn’t have been?”

The blood was pulsing in my neck. “What makes you think
you’d
make such a great mother? All you cared about was your career. Now that the phone’s no longer ringing off the hook, you think it might be fun to go shopping at Gymboree and learn all about potty training? Gimme a break.”

Savannah’s eyes were wet with tears. Once again, I’d gone too far.

“I didn’t mean that,” I said.

“Yes, you did. Every word.”

A stylist needs 1,600 hours of formal training before he or she can legally trim a single head of hair in the state of California, but you don’t need five minutes of instruction to bring another human being into the world. Nobody knows whether they’ll be worth anything as a parent until they’re already on the job, and by then, it’s usually too late. I thought about sharing my observations with Savannah on the subject, but I knew she didn’t want to hear them.

T
he intimate West Hollywood lounge I remembered as the Wet Spot was no more. It was now a discothèque called Propaganda. Gone were the leather banquettes and piano bar, replaced by a throbbing dance club done up all in red, with mirror disco balls hanging from the ceiling, and Bolshevik-chic posters of Lenin on the walls. The cocktail waitresses wore glossy jackboots and red leather, form-fitting Commie uniforms that showed plenty of thigh. The only element that apparently hadn’t changed, aside from the name over the door, was the clientele. There was still plenty of chest hair and Eurotrash. Techno tunes pounded from the speakers, loud enough that I could feel the bass throbbing in the pit of my throat. Propaganda was mobbed. It wasn’t even happy hour.

“They make a mean apple martini here,” Savannah shouted over the music.

“You’ve been here?”

“Once or twice.” She headed off toward the bar, through throngs of gyrating dancers.

A bouncer dressed like a Soviet infantryman stood guard near the door. I walked over and asked if Gennady Bondarenko was still the owner. He leaned closer and touched his ear like he couldn’t hear me. I repeated myself, only louder.

“You want to see Mr. Bondarenko?”

I nodded. His accent was working-class British. A Sig Sauer pistol rode his right hip in a pancake holster.

“And what, if I may ask, is the purpose of your visit?”

“I’m from Publisher’s Clearing House,” I yelled into his ear. “I’m here to give Mr. Bondarenko his million dollar grand prize. I left the balloons in the van.”

The bouncer leaned his head back and laughed. He had no fillings. He asked me to turn around with my hands on the wall, and gave me a quick pat down. I’d left my revolver in Savannah’s car. Along with the balloons.

“Who shall I say is here to see him?”

“Tell him a friend of Laz.”

The bouncer typed a text message on his iPhone. Two brunettes in hip-huggers and spandex tops strutted past us to go have a smoke outside. One of them smiled at me. I smiled back despite my better self.

The bouncer’s phone beeped. He read the response to his text message. Then he yelled in my ear. “Straight back, up the stairs. There’s a door marked, ‘Private.’ Off you go.”

I nodded my thanks and started working my way through the club. The dance floor was packed with young women and stylishly unshaven young men all trying desperately to look their sexy best, gyrating and toasting each other with shouts of, “
Za vas
!”—“To you!”—when “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees began playing and everybody started cheering wildly like they’d all just won the lotto. A gym rat with too much gel in his hair started to rock out and backed straight into me.

“Watch the fuck where you’re going, gramps,” he said.

We both knew he was in the wrong. We both knew he was trying to impress the young lady he was dancing with. We both knew that the situation would quickly escalate were I to let it.

“My mistake,” I said with a smile and kept walking.

I couldn’t decide if it was the Buddha’s influence or me mellowing with age. Either way, I had to admit, it felt kind of good, not forcing the issue.

I reached the stairway the bouncer directed me to. I looked back for Savannah but couldn’t see her through the crowd. I climbed the stairs and walked down a short hallway to a door marked, “Private.” I knocked.

“You are the one who is friend of Laz?” The voice on the other side of the door was Russian, female, older.

“We used to work together,” I said, “for the same company.”

“You have photo ID?”

I got out my driver’s license and slid it under the door. A few seconds went by, then the door bolt turned, followed by a second lock. A hand slid the security chain from its track. The door opened a crack, revealing a thick, low-slung, middle-aged woman in a pink velour warm-up suit. Her hair was the color of carrot juice. She was puffing on a Virginia Slim.

“I am Anya,” she said, handing me back my license, “sister of Laz.”

“Cordell Logan. I’m a friend of Laz. I’m looking for Gennady Bondarenko. Is he around?”

“Gennady is my husband.” She glanced furtively behind me to make sure no one else was coming up the stairs, then gestured. “You will please to come in.”

Anya Bondarenko locked the door behind me and slid the safety chain back in place. Inside the office was an executive desk made of burl wood with a matching filing cabinet, a freestanding bank safe, and a foldout couch. A sixty-one-inch plasma television hung from the far wall. A big, square-jawed twenty-year-old in camouflage fatigue pants and a sky-blue UCLA T-shirt lounged on the couch, nursing a Heineken and watching Jerry Springer. He had close-cropped hair the color of night and three days’ worth of facial stubble black enough to be blue.