Текст книги "Flat Spin"

Автор книги: David Freed

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“If you could check my other flights that would be great.”

“Certainly.” More computer keys clicking. “Yes, sir. It looks like you made an earlier connection from Atyrau to Istanbul.”

I could feel my pulse surge. “Did you say Atyrau?”

“Yes, sir. Atyrau.”

I told her emailed copies would not be necessary and thanked her for her time.

After I slipped the ticket stub in my pocket, I tossed the trash bag in which I’d found it into the trunk of Savannah’s Jaguar along with another bag I’d yet to go through.

NINE

Savannah was sitting cross-legged on the lawn in front of her house, reading the Style section of The New York Times. She was barefoot, wearing a broad-brimmed straw sun hat, a black, formfitting leotard top, and Daisy Duke-style cutoff jeans, short enough to reveal the bottoms of her front pockets. I tried to imagine that she weighed 400 pounds, but it didn’t work.

I popped open the trunk and hauled out the two Hefty bags I’d taken from Echevarria’s backyard.

“What are those?”

“What do they look like?”

“You’re driving around with garbage bags in my Jaguar?”

“They’re from your late husband’s house.”

“You found something,” Savannah said, her voice rising with excitement.

I debated telling her about the Turkish Airlines ticket, about how Echevarria had apparently visited the port city of Atyrau in Kazakhstan days before he died. Having flown in and out of Atyrau more than a few times myself on various assignments, I knew that it was the commercial airport nearest the burgeoning Kashagan oil fields, where Savannah’s father had prospective business interests with the men I’d lunched with in El Molino. It had to have been more than happenstance, Echevarria traveling through Atyrau just before he was murdered. Could be Buzz was correct. Could be Echevarria had gotten too close to Tarasov, uncovered something he shouldn’t have, and paid for it with his life. I didn’t know where the truth lay. I did, however, know that sharing what little of it I knew at that point with my ex-wife would only make it more difficult for me to explain to her the covert nature of how Echevarria and I once earned a living. I wasn’t prepared to tell her that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be.

“What did you find?” Savannah demanded.

I closed the trunk lid.

“You’ve never told me anything, anyway, so why start now, right?” she said, smoldering.

“I need somewhere to spread this stuff out,” I said.

She huffed a sigh as if to say, “I can’t believe I’m accommodating this jerk,” then led me inside.

* * *

The centerpiece of Savannah’s den was a massive walnut desk, ornately hand-carved, of German origin, was my guess. The oak plank floor played host to a room-size, antique Persian rug worth more than my airplane. Above the moss rock fireplace was a stuffed moose head, its mouth curled in a taxidermy grin, its dark, glassy eyes staring down at us dully. I nodded toward it.

“You bag that yourself?”

“Came with the house,” Savannah said, still steamed at me.

Old newspapers were stacked in a brass rack beside the desk. She spread some on the rug. I dumped out both trash bags on them.

“It’s probably pointless to ask what you’re looking for,” she said.

“Probably.”

She snatched up a copy of the Wall Street Journal from a mahogany side table and plopped down in an overstuffed armchair near the window, facing away from me, her naked thighs draped over the arm of the chair. I tried not to stare.

I got down on my knees and sifted through the garbage. Cans. Bottles. Newspapers. Junk mail. Used coffee filters filled with wet grounds. Used tissues filled with who-knows-what. There was nothing to be mined in the way of potential intelligence.

“I need to go see your father again,” I said, tossing trash back in the bags.

Savannah put down her magazine. “This is starting to really piss me off. You tell him, but not me? My father wasn’t married to Arlo, Logan, I was.”

“Thanks for reminding me. I’d completely forgotten.”

She gazed up at Bullwinkle as if for divine guidance. Maybe it was the way the sunlight filtered in through the windows, but she looked different. Sadder. Definitely older.

“I have a right to know who killed my husband.”

“There’s nothing I can tell you, Savannah.”

“You can, but you won’t. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“I need a ride to my plane. You don’t want to take me, I can catch a cab.”

Savannah rubbed the back of her neck and sighed again. More than a little grudgingly, she said, “I’ll get my shoes.”

I called Carlisle’s office in Nevada after she left the room. Lamont Royale answered the phone. I said I had some news for his boss that I needed to deliver in person. I told him I’d be at the North Las Vegas Airport in approximately three hours. Royale put me on hold. A minute later, he was back. He said he’d be waiting for me curbside when I arrived.

“Mr. Carlisle says to tell you he’s looking forward to seeing you again, and asked that you please fly safe.”

“I’ll try not to crash.”

Savannah drove me to the Van Nuys Airport without a word. We pulled in outside the executive terminal. She put the car in park, then turned to face me.

“I resent the fact you’re willing to share information with my father, but not with me.”

“He’s paying for my services. You’re not.”

“How can you be so cruel? We shared a bed once.”

“It’s been a long time since we shared a bed, Savannah.”

I grabbed my flight bag out of the backseat and got out. She looked like she was wiping her eyes as she drove away. I doubted it was the smog.

* * *

Even at 9,500 feet, the air above the high desert northeast of Los Angeles was hot and uncomfortably bumpy. The Duck bucked the convective currents like an unbroken appaloosa. I eased the throttle back, readjusted the mixture, and rode out the thermals.

A fly had somehow found its way inside the cockpit. It buzzed around, strafing instruments, ricocheting off the windows. I tried to feel pity for the little bastard – he’d probably been a telemarketer in a previous life – but somewhere over Hesperia, after his twentieth attempted touch-and-go on my face, I rolled up a sectional map from my flight bag and whacked him into his next plane of existence. The Buddha, who values all life, including flies and telemarketers, would not have been pleased.

Just then, a shadow streaked across the windscreen, followed by a tremendous jolt that made the Duck pitch violently down and to the right – wake turbulence from another aircraft. Instinctively, I leveled the wings and raised the nose, my heart hammering in my ears. I should’ve never killed that fly. Forgive me, Buddha.

“Cessna Four Charlie Lima, Joshua Center,” the controller said over my headphones, “traffic, ten o’clock, northwest bound, Predator UAV, 12,600 feet, descending.”

Now you tell me. “Four Charlie Lima has the traffic,” I said, keying the mic.

Ahead and to my left was a drone – an “unmanned aerial vehicle” in Air Force parlance – designed to fire laser-guided missiles at troublemakers like the late Osama bin Laden. It was twice as big as a Cessna 172, painted Air Force gray, with a bulbous nose, thin stubby wings, and an upside-down, V-shaped empennage. At that moment, in some bunker or trailer somewhere, some pilot with his hand on a joystick and his ass planted in a comfortable swivel chair, was watching a monitor and flying the UAV, sipping coffee. He probably never even saw me.

Las Vegas Approach cleared me into the restricted Class B airspace surrounding their city, vectoring me across the airport at Henderson, then over the east end of the main runways at McCarran International, where I watched two jumbo jets on parallel approaches float toward touchdown, 500 feet below me. From there, I banked left on an assigned heading of 280 degrees, flying directly over the casinos on the Strip. Approach handed me off to the tower at North Las Vegas and the controller instructed me to enter the pattern downwind for Runway One-Two right.

“Four Charlie Lima, winds, one-six-zero at seven, cleared to land, Runway One-Two right.”

“Four Charlie Lima, cleared to land, one-two right.”

My touchdown was a thing of beauty, all modesty aside. I painted it on, cleared the active runway, came to a stop on the taxiway and contacted ground control.

“Ground, Four Charlie Lima requests taxi to transit parking.”

“Four Charlie Lima, roger. If you follow that white airport van that’s just rolling up to your two o’clock, he’ll get you where you need to go.”

“Roger.”

On the back of the van was a large sign that said, “Follow me.” Who was I to argue?

The driver was a clean-cut kid of about twenty who said his name was Jeremiah. As we drew near the parking area, he jumped out of the van and guided me with hand signals into an open parking spot. I shut down the engine. Jeremiah quickly tied down the Duck for me, then drove me to the passenger terminal. I tried to tip him a couple of bucks, but he refused them.

“Just doing my job,” Jeremiah said cheerfully.

“You should be cloned,” I said.

A black Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows was waiting in the no-parking zone as I emerged from the terminal’s main entrance. Lamont Royale got out from the driver’s side.

“How was your flight?”

“Bumpy.”

“Glad I wasn’t with you. I don’t handle turbulence too well.”

“Turbulence is organic to the human experience. We learn from the bumps to appreciate the smooth.”

“Man, that’s heavy,” Royale said. “You should think about starting your own cult.”

“Only if there are tax exemptions and groupies.”

He grinned, took my bag and deposited it in the trunk. I opened the rear passenger door. Sitting on the other side of the bench seat was Miles Zambelli.

“Welcome to Las Vegas,” he said without looking up from his smartphone.

Royale shut my door, then climbed in behind the wheel. We pulled away from the airport and out onto Rancho Drive.

“Perhaps you’d care to tell me what it is you plan to discuss with Mr. Carlisle,” Zambelli said, pecking away on his phone. “That way, he’ll know what to expect and can prepare accordingly.”

“I’d prefer it be a surprise.”

“Mr. Carlisle doesn’t care for surprises.”

“I suspect he doesn’t care for personal secretaries sticking their noses in places they don’t belong, either.”

Zambelli slowly looked up at me over the top of his John Lennon glasses with the kind of smug condescension those of the upper crust reserve for any lesser life form that dares to question their superiority.

“I’m his executive assistant,” Zambelli said. “And, just so you’re aware, there are no secrets between Mr. Carlisle and myself.”

“Well, like the Buddha said, ‘There’s a first time for everything.’”

I decided I disliked Miles Zambelli. Not because he’d somehow managed to bed my ex-wife, nor because of the possibility, however remote, that he might’ve had something to do with the death of Arlo Echevarria. Even his ingrained superior smirk didn’t do it. No, what chapped my ass about Miles Zambelli as we motored south onto the Strip was the fact that he broke wind like a dairy cow, silent and deadly, while pretending all the while that it wasn’t him baking the brownies. The limo stunk like a Chicago stockyard. I could see Royale in the rearview mirror, squinting and trying not to gag. It was 110 degrees outside. I opened my window anyway.

Flanking Las Vegas Boulevard, the sidewalks outside the casinos were a milieu of protuberant bellies and cottage-cheese thighs, of sunburned Midwestern tourists sloshing margaritas out of plastic cups and snapping digital photos of themselves in front of fake Roman statues and laughing way too hard, as if to convince themselves of all the crazy fun they were having. Everybody seemed to be talking on cell phones except the homeless people, who talked to themselves. There were young guys with tattoos of skulls and dragonflies, young women with bare midriffs and pierced belly buttons, corpulent old ladies in electric scooter chairs with unfiltered cigarettes dangling from their lips, couples in matching casino souvenir T-shirts towing matching rolling luggage. There were attractive young Asian women in black pantsuits offering free tickets to come watch C-list comedians perform in exchange for interminable time-share presentations, while sad-eyed Latino laborers patrolled seemingly every street corner, handing out pornographic color flyers to every passerby, including prepubescent children walking with their parents.

To hell with the stink inside the limo. I rolled my window back up before I could catch some disease.

Zambelli took out a square of felt from his trouser pocket, unfolded it, and carefully polished his glasses.

“I have my own theories as to what may have happened to Mr. Echevarria,” he said.

“Really? Do tell.”

“I’d urge you to check out his first wife. My understanding is that she had more than enough reason to hurt him.”

“And you know this how?”

“Let’s just say I have my sources.”

Zambelli let loose another silent stink torpedo. My eyes were stinging. We were about to have a little chat about proper etiquette and how he was either going to have to stop with the ass rumblings or I was going to have to put my foot up his rectum, when we rear-ended a black Cadillac SUV with tinted windows and chrome rims.

The noise of the crash was worse than the crash itself – the screech of brakes followed a half-second later by a jolting explosion of metal-on-metal and the tinkling cascade of broken glass. The limo bucked a couple of feet into the air like a Brahma Bull, then fell back down, bouncing on its suspension.

Zambelli stared straight ahead, blinking. He looked like he was in shock but appeared otherwise unhurt. The same could be said for Royale. The steering wheel airbag had deployed. Steam spewed from the limo’s crumpled hood.

“Everybody OK?”

“I’m fine,” Zambelli said.

“It wasn’t my fault.” Royale said. “The guy stopped short.”

I undid my seatbelt and got out.

The other driver was already surveying the damage. The rear end of his SUV was stove in like an empty Budweiser can. Pieces of bumper and other debris littered the street. He circled and paced and kept shouting, “Look at my ride!”

He was about five-nine, solid and wide. Shaved skull. Baggy shorts. No shirt. No neck. Pumped pecs and grossly oversized arms– the kind you build juicing steroids. A tattooed German cross took up the whole of his upper back. Over his heart, in six-inch gothic script and surrounded by a daisy chain of intertwined ivy and little swastikas, were the letters “AB”—for Aryan Brotherhood. The dude was either an avowed white supremacist or he played one on TV.

“So,” I said, “how’s your day going otherwise?”

“What kind of stupid fucking question is that? Jesus Christ! Look at my fucking ride!” He was in a ’roid rage. His topaz eyes looked like they were about to explode out of his bullet head.

“Relax, cowboy. Insurance’ll cover it.”

“I got no insurance, fuckhead!”

“We do. Trust me, your pimpmobile will be back in shape before you know it. Better’n new. And you won’t be out a penny. The important thing is, nobody got hurt, right?”

He drew a deep breath and let it out, trying to dial down his temper. “I want a rental car while mine’s in the shop – and none of them little fuckin’ Hello Kitty Jap rides, neither.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged.”

Other cars maneuvered around us through the intersection. Two drivers rolled down their windows to holler that they’d called 911. I could hear an emergency siren in the distance.

Royale climbed out of the limo and strode over. “Why’d you stop?” he demanded of the Aryan.

“Why did I stop? I stopped because the light was yellow, asshole!”

“You stop at a red light, not yellow.”

“Maybe in Africa.”

“I’m not African, motherfucker. I’m American!”

“Who you calling a motherfucker, you little spade faggot!”

They grappled. The skinhead grabbed a handful of Lamont Royale’s shirt and was about to slam him face-first into the side of the SUV, when I hooked his arm and flipped him over my left thigh, judo-style. He landed on his face, scraping his forehead bloody. Bits of gravel stuck to the wound. He bounced to his feet and flicked open a switchblade.

“You just made the worst mistake of your life,” he snarled.

“If you only knew how many mistakes I’ve made in life, Adolf, I’m confident you’d retract that statement.”

“Fuck you.”

He lunged. I sidestepped the blade, snatched his hand, then twisted it back and away from his body, splintering the joint with an audible snap. A deceptively benign sound, I thought. Like Mrs. Schmulowitz clicking her tongue. He dropped the knife and rolled around on the street, clutching his broken wrist and writhing in agony.

“You’ll pay for this! I’m suing your ass! You hear me?”

I picked up the knife, retracted the blade, and put it in my pocket. I could have lectured him on the notion that suffering is really payback for our own bad deeds, and that I would probably be repaid with excellent karma for putting down a racist puke like him. But I didn’t. It probably wouldn’t have done any good anyway.

“Thanks, man,” Lamont Royale said. “I owe you one.”

“My good deed for the day,” I said.

A fire engine and paramedic unit rolled up. Zambelli walked over, looking like some NASCAR fan who’d just witnessed a spectacular crash, his expression one of horror and rapture.

“You totally owned that guy,” he said.

“I’m just glad you had my back.”

I doubted my sarcasm was lost on him. The man went to Harvard.

TEN

Gil Carlisle’s 14,000-square foot penthouse occupied the top three floors of a fifty-four-story high-rise one block off the Las Vegas strip and a thousand light years from the tumblin’ tumble-weeds of west Texas where he’d grown up. Cut-crystal chandeliers hung from twenty-three-foot ceilings. There were fragrantly fresh gardenias in Waterford vases, and a circular stairway hewn from solid French limestone. There was Frank the bodyguard, standing watch near the private elevator where my ex-father-in-law greeted me.

“Seven bathrooms, seven bidets,” Carlisle observed proudly with a sweep of his hand as he walked me into the living room. “Hell, I didn’t even know what a bidet was before I bought the place.Y’all want something to drink? An Arnold Palmer, some lemonade or something? Mr. Royale can whip you up anything you want.”

“Mango nectar,” I said, for the hell of it.

“On the rocks?” Royale said.

“Rocks are for cavemen.”

“Blended it is.”

He strode across the living room to a fully stocked bar that looked like it had been salvaged from the saloon scene of some Old Western movie.

“Never knew you to be a mango man,” Carlisle said.

“The Buddha was big into mangos. Tons of vitamins.”

“Makes sense.”

I had no idea whether the Buddha liked or loathed mango juice. I only asked for a glass of the stuff because the still-bitter former son-in-law in me wanted to let my still-controlling ex-father-inlaw know that I wasn’t quite as predictable as that guy who’d been only too willing a few days earlier to pocket his $25,000 check like some junkie scoring a fix.

“Yeah, Mr. Royale’s one of a kind,” Carlisle said, loud enough for Lamont to hear. “Came to work for me about six months ago. I don’t know how I ever lived without him. Cooks like a damn French chef and hits a drive 300 yards, straight as a Comanche’s arrow. He keeps giving me lessons out on the course, I’m gonna be joining the tour. Me and Tiger.”

“Luckiest day of my life, the day I went to work for Mr. Carlisle,” Royale said, slicing a fresh mango from behind the bar.

Carlisle and I sat down on a long couch covered in steer hide. He asked me if I intended to press charges against the knifewielding skinhead whose wrist I’d broken on the way in from the airport. I said I had better things to do.

Zambelli entered. “Sir, excuse my interruption. Mr. Tarasov just faxed in the draft memorandum of agreement on the Kashagan limited partnership. Everything appears to be in order.” He handed Carlisle a sheaf of documents and gave me a sideways look while Carlisle took a gold Mont Blanc fountain pen from his shirt pocket and unscrewed the cap.

I waited as Carlisle skimmed the documents and edited the partnership agreement.

“Mr. Logan was reluctant to share information with me,” Zambelli said, more to me than his boss. “He said he was concerned about confidentiality.”

“My young assistant here is chompin’ at the bit to know what you’ve learned with respect to Mr. Echevarria since we last spoke,” Carlisle said. “I’d have to say he’s not alone.”

“I’d prefer that we talk alone.”

“Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of Mr. Zambelli.”

Zambelli’s lips curled in a gloating smile.

Carlisle handed Zambelli the documents, returned the gold pen to his shirt pocket, crossed his arms and waited for me to dish.

I asked him when was the last time he’d spoken with Echevarria.

Carlisle looked away, thinking. “You know,” he said after a few seconds, “I don’t rightly remember. About a week before he passed, as best I can recall.”

“Echevarria flew to Kazakhstan a week before he died. I assume you knew that.”

Zambelli cleared his throat and pretended to sift through the signed documents, while Carlisle gazed at me a little too dispassionately. “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”

“You’re planning to do business in Kazakhstan, Echevarria goes to Kazakhstan. A week later, he’s murdered.”

Carlisle got up and looked out at the view. Through his eightyfoot expanse of greenhouse-style windows, he could take in all of downtown Las Vegas and the sunbaked wastelands of Nevada beyond.

“It’s important to know the lay of the land, who your friends and enemies are, before you start writing big checks,” he said, watching traffic crawl along on the boulevard below. “I had Arlo do some digging for me. Just to be on the safe side.”

“When you say ‘friends,’ you mean Tarasov?”

“Among others.”

“Did Echevarria turn up anything?”

“Nothing to suggest that Tarasov would do him any harm.”

“Unless, of course, Arlo did find something, and somebody took him out before he got a chance to tell you.”

“If Arlo had anything to say, I’m sure he would’ve called me.”

“You don’t call with sensitive information,” I said. “You deliver it in person.”

“Sounds to me like you’ve been watching too many spy movies, Mr. Logan,” Zambelli said.

“Who has time for movies? I’m too busy watching Dancing with the Stars.”

Carlisle turned somberly from the window. “I know that you and Arlo worked for the government in some kind of sensitive job, tracking people, whatever it was the two of you did. We had some beers once. He started telling me things he probably shouldn’t have. I hushed him up before he got too far. Never told Savannah a word of it. The point is, I hired him because he was married to my daughter and needed the work. But I can tell you one thing, beyond question: the job he did for me had nothing to do with who killed him or why.”

“Are you aware that Pavel Tarasov has been linked to Russian intelligence?”

Carlisle rubbed his eyes and ran his hand across his mouth. “Look, I have every confidence that had Arlo found out anything significant, anything at all, he would’ve let me know. Pavel Tarasov’s a good man. I’ve seen his heart. I’ll consider myself fortunate indeed to be in business with him.”

“If he’s such a good man,” I said, “why did you have Echevarria investigate him?”

“Like I said. Better safe than sorry.” Carlisle crossed to the bar and poured himself a scotch.

“Why didn’t you tell me your daughter and your assistant, Mr. Zambelli, slept together?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business!” Zambelli said. He took an angry step toward me with clenched fists, then thought better of it.

“Maybe not my business,” I said, “but it is the LAPD’s business.”

“How the hell’s it their business?” Carlisle said.

“Wife has fling, husband leaves, husband turns up dead. I’m no homicide investigator, but I do believe that when they get to the ‘who done it’ list, the whole jealous lover scenario is usually right up there, no?”

“If you’re insinuating that I was somehow jealous of Mr. Echevarria, or that I had anything to do in any way with his death,” Zambelli said, “you’re sadly mistaken.”

Carlisle surveyed me coldly. “You have no right to come into my house, making bullshit insinuations like that.”

“You’re right, Gil. I probably should’ve made them at the police station.”

Carlisle’s eyes were flat hard stones. Gone was the velvet twang from his voice. “Did you tell the police what happened between Savannah and Mr. Zambelli?”

“You asked me to tell them what I knew about Echevarria. That’s what I did. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Very good,” he said, heading for the door. “I suggest you keep it that way.”

“Why don’t you want the police to know about Savannah’s affair, Gil?”

“Mr. Royale will see you back to your airplane,” Carlisle said.

He disappeared down a long hallway. The forcefulness of his stride conveyed barely bridled anger. Zambelli shot me a contemptuous look and followed after him, nearly colliding with Lamont, who swerved like a running back and somehow managed to hang on to the highball glass of mango juice he’d prepared without spilling a drop. A pink hibiscus floated on top.

“The hibiscus is edible,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard a word of my exchange with Carlisle and Zambelli.

“Bonus,” I said.

* * *

Lamont Royale chauffeured me back to the North Las Vegas airport in Carlisle’s four-seat Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead convertible. The car had teakwood paneling and the initials “GC” stitched into its leather headrests. I rode shotgun.

“Don’t be too upset with him,” Lamont said. “Mr. Carlisle’s a fine man.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Royale told me how he was originally from Florida. He’d had a few minor scrapes with the law growing up, he said, and was grateful to Carlisle for having taken a chance on him. He told me how much he missed his girlfriend, a dental hygienist named Laura who lived with her widowed father in Los Angeles. They saw each other on weekends, taking turns driving across the desert.

“They’re real tight, Laura and her dad; she doesn’t want to be too far away from him,” Lamont said, glancing over his shoulder as he changed lanes. “I’d move to LA, but then I’d have to quit working for Mr. Carlisle. I just can’t see doing that. Best job I ever had.”

“Stuck between the rock and hard place.”

“Exactly.”

He asked me how long Savannah and I had been married.

Long enough to know better, I said.

We stopped at a red light. A van pulled up in the next lane over, hauling a rolling billboard – a toll-free number and the words, “Fresh Hot Girls Delivered To Your Door In 20 Minutes or Less!!!” superimposed over the picture of a huge naked breast.

“I feel terrible for Savannah. She’s such a class act,” Royale said. “I hope they catch whoever killed Mr. Echevarria. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but I’m sure he was a real good guy.”

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” I said, distracted by the giant breast.

“You don’t really think Miles Zambelli had anything to do with it, do you?” Royale said.

“I think that low-wing airplanes are easier to taxi in a crosswind than high-wing planes. I think that the national championship in college football should be decided in single-elimination tournament play, like basketball. I also happen to think my landlady makes the best brisket this side of the Wailing Wall. Beyond that, I don’t know what I really think anymore.”

“I just don’t think Miles is capable of murder,” Royale said.

“You push somebody hard enough,” I said, “they’re capable of anything.”

* * *

Traffic on Interstate 15 was stop-and-go from Baker south to Victorville as a legion of Southern Californians, their weekend debaucheries in Sin City come to an end, inched their way down Cajon Pass and into the eastern fringes of the Los Angeles Basin. Driving would’ve taken seven hours given all the congestion. I made it back to Rancho Bonita via air in a little more than two.

Leonardo da Vinci is purported to have said that once a person has tasted flight, “You will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.” Old Leo nailed it – at least on days when the vagaries of Mother Nature aren’t factored into the mix, as was the case that afternoon. The weather had improved radically in time for my flight back to Rancho Bonita. No clouds. No turbulence. So silky was the air that it felt like the Duck was fixed in time and place, dangling there on some invisible thread while the earth glided silently by beneath us. I tried to think profound thoughts. Like how privileged I was to be unshackled from the wingless masses two miles below me, and how grateful I should’ve felt simply to be alive on such a glorious day. But all I could think about was how that little weenie, Miles Zambelli, had slept with my ex-wife. Which didn’t even begin to compare with the venom I harbored for Echevarria. Even now, after all the years, I despised him for having stolen Savannah. I hated myself even more for my inability to let go of it. We’d been brothers-in-arms. Spilled blood together. Gotten stinking blind-eyed drunk together. The Buddha believed that to understand everything was to forgive everything. I had a long way to go, I realized, before I could forgive Arlo Echevarria for anything, let alone everything. But I told myself that I would try harder. To find who killed him would be a big first step. Given our shared history, I suppose I owed him that much.

“Cessna Four Charlie Lima, Joshua Approach, turn right thirty degrees for traffic, Boeing 737, four miles southbound, descending out of 11,000 feet into Burbank. Caution wake turbulence.”

“Four Charlie Lima is coming right thirty degrees, looking for traffic.”

The jetliner was approaching from above and to my right. I tipped my starboard wing, nudged the right rudder pedal and eased into a standard rate turn. My new course would take me well behind the jet. The trick would be to avoid flying through the vortexes of violent air corkscrewing down and away from his wingtips – invisible mini-tornadoes that could easily flip the Duck like a flapjack and definitely ruin my day. I turned another twenty degrees and widened the angle between us until our opposing paths were roughly parallel. By the time I turned back on my original heading, we’d be far behind him.