Текст книги "Fangs Out"

Автор книги: David Freed

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Fifteen

“Mary Mother and Joseph,” Dutch Holland said, craning his head out of the passenger window for fresh air, “you stink.”

I drove as fast as the Oldsmobile would allow until we found a general store in the humble hamlet of Independence, our eyes watering from the overpowering stench of skunk that was me.

The cashier, a porcine blonde with black roots and an attitude, started coughing uncontrollably as she tried to find a price tag on the bottle of hydrogen peroxide I’d set down in front of her, along with vinegar, baking soda, liquid detergent, bib overalls, and a chartreuse “I ♥ California” T-shirt.

“Tell ya what,” she said, gagging as she tossed the bottle into the bag, “thirty bucks for the whole kit and caboodle and we’ll call it even.”

“My day’s just getting better and better.”

I tried to hand her the cash. She backed away from the cash register like I had leprosy.

“Just leave the money on the counter.”

I did as she asked, stuffed my purchases in a plastic bag, and got out of there before she threw up.

* * *

There was a run-down, eight-unit motel out on the highway south of town boasting “Free Cable TV!” Dutch paid for a room – the least he could do, he said, considering it was me and not him who’d been unfortunate enough to go mano-a-mano with Pepé Le Pew – then waited in the car while I went inside to de-skunk.

The bathroom sink was stained hard-water green. A centipede ran laps around the bottom of the chipped white bathtub.

“Moving day, crazy legs,” I said, trapping the squiggling insect in a wax paper cup before turning him loose outside.

I plugged the tub’s drain with a hard rubber stopper chained to the overflow and ran the water as hot as it would go, squeezing in the entire bottle of detergent. My skunky jeans and shirt went into the plastic bag from the general store, and from there, outside my room. When the tub was half-full, I poured in the hydrogen peroxide, most of the vinegar, and all of the baking soda. Then I lowered myself in and made like a submarine, grateful at having remembered an article in Boys’ Life I read growing up that said vinegar and dish soap, not tomato juice, did the trick when skunked.

The scalding water helped steam the stench from my pores, but did little to resolve the conundrum that swirled in my head. Where was Dutch’s buddy, Al Demaerschalk? What insights, if any, could he offer on who had tampered with the engine on my airplane, and how much of it, if any, was connected to the slaying of Janet Bollinger?

Four days had passed since Hub Walker had hired me to help clear the good name of the man his murdered daughter had once worked for. In that time, I’d crashed my airplane, been accosted at gunpoint by various assorted lowlives, and managed to dig the schism between my ex-wife and me only deeper. I’d also made a fast ten grand, but the money hardly seemed worth it.

The water was beginning to burn. I pulled the stopper and stood while the tub drained, slathering dish soap on a thin washcloth and scrubbing my scalp and body until it hurt. Then I showered off and scrubbed all over again.

Dutch Holland was snoring in the passenger seat of the Oldsmobile, his head back, mouth open, when I emerged a half-hour later and dropped my old clothes in a Dumpster behind the motel. I could’ve used some sleep myself, but I was eager to get back to San Diego before nightfall. No use tempting fate, flying a single-engine airplane over mountain terrain you can’t see.

I checked the Olds’ trunk for the jerry cans that “Mike” said were inside. Of course, there was none. He’d been lying the whole time. As if I didn’t know that already. Dutch and I would have to land and refuel somewhere en route back to San Diego. That meant part of the flight would be in darkness. Hopefully, we’d be out of the mountains by then.

I climbed in on the driver’s side, my hair wet and uncombed, closed the door as softly as I could, and turned over the engine. Holland barely stirred. He didn’t wake up until we were on the highway southbound and well on our way toward the Fair View Airport. He yawned, rubbed his eyes and nodded toward the new T-shirt and bib overalls I was wearing.

“You look like you just stepped out of the Grand Ole Opry.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

I wanted to say that I was dressed that way only because I couldn’t find anything else in my size at the general store in Independence, and that beggars can’t be choosers. But I kept my mouth shut. I’d change clothes after we landed.

“At least you don’t stink anymore,” Dutch said, “though you do smell a tad vinegary.”

I turned on the car’s radio. An evangelical preacher was discussing why God intended for only men to mow the lawn, and how scrap-booking and cooking were lady-only activities.

“My wife couldn’t cook to save her life,” Holland said.

“My ex-wife is a great cook.”

One more thing to miss about Savannah.

I changed stations and caught most of Jimmy Buffett’s “Cowboy in the Jungle,” a song about learning to trust your instincts while accepting life’s inevitable ups and downs. Listening to the tune, I decided, was worth more than an hour on any shrink’s couch.

* * *

Fair Vista Airport was as deserted as when we’d first arrived. Even without security gates, Dutch’s plane had been left untouched. He asked if he could fly left seat. After all, he said, it was his airplane. I checked my watch: the sun would be down in less than an hour. It would take probably half that to reach the Inyokern Airport at the valley’s southern end, where we’d refuel before continuing on to San Diego.

“OK,” I said, “you fly us to Inyokern. I’ll get us back to your hangar.”

He smiled and flew magnificently. We landed, gassed up, switched seats, and lifted off once more, just as the last of the sun slid into the Pacific.

At altitude, on a clear night, Los Angeles glimmers black and gold like a living thing. Freeways and major streets pulsate like arteries with the flow of red taillights, feeding dozens of city centers – the amorphous creature’s vital organs. Electrified baseball and soccer fields festoon the body, their high-intensity stadium lamps burning holes in the darkness. Here and there, airport beacons rotate green and white. For pilots like Dutch Holland who are born and not made, it is a panorama that never gets tiresome. He gazed serenely to the west, watching jetliners bound for LAX hanging in the night sky like strands of fireflies. I knew what he was thinking because I was thinking it, too: that being able to fly an airplane, to enjoy that much beauty and freedom, was a privilege few others will ever know.

“’Evening, Los Angeles Center,” I said, keying my radio push-to-talk button. “Cherokee 5-4-8-7 Whiskey, with a VFR request.”

“Cherokee 5-4-8-7 Whiskey, Los Angeles Center, squawk 4-2-5-1 and say request.”

I dialed in 4251 on the Cherokee’s transponder and informed the controller of our location and altitude. I said we were en route to San Diego’s Montgomery Field, and requested “Flight Following.” That way, we’d be on radar – a good thing when you’d rather not scrape paint with other airplanes.

“Cherokee 8–7 Whiskey, radar contact, position and altitude as stated. Chino altimeter, 3-0-0-0. Maintain VFR.”

“Triple zero, 8–7 Whiskey.”

I glanced over at Holland. He was now slumped forward against his shoulder restraints, his mouth open, dozing contentedly.

Over the horizon, the lights of San Diego beckoned like an unsolved riddle.

* * *

We touched down at Montgomery shortly before ten P.M. Fifteen minutes later, following a pit stop at the port-a-potty, Holland and his Cherokee were safely back inside their hangar home.

“Thanks for humoring an old man,” he said.

“Thanks for letting me fly your plane, Dutch. You’ve got yourself a fine ship.”

He patted the Piper’s propeller spinner like the muzzle of a trusty mount, then offered to let me spend the night on the air mattress normally reserved for Al Demaerschalk.

“He’s probably over at his son’s house,” Holland said. “We probably should’ve started there to begin with. We can go over first thing tomorrow, if you want.”

My stomach reminded me I hadn’t eaten anything all day except those doughnuts at breakfast.

“I appreciate the offer, Dutch, but think I might take off and catch something to eat.”

“No need. I got plenty right here.”

He led me to a large cardboard box sitting on a folding card table. Inside were food items that, it’s safe to say, few women would ever put willingly in their mouths.

“How ’bout some Vienna sausages?” Dutch said, holding up a can for my consideration. “Got your pork rinds, your buffalo jerky, ahh, OK, here we go.” He pulled a glass jar out of the box. “Pickled eggs. Wash it all down with a couple of root beers. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

It certainly got a whole lot better than that, but who was I to contradict a ninety-one-year-old man? My options were simple. Find a Taco Bell and bed down in the Escalade, or go on a junk food bender and camp out with one of the world’s last remaining World War II fighter pilots? Holland waited on my answer like he’d just asked me to the prom. The old man was lonely.

“Who could resist pickled eggs?” I said.

He grinned and offered me the jar. I forked out one with my fingers. It had the consistency of rubber. Which is exactly how it tasted.

* * *

Dutch Holland could’ve set off fire alarms with his snoring that night, and I would have slept through it. Could’ve been because I was exhausted from lack of sleep the night before, or because I was bunking snugly under the wing of an airplane, something I hadn’t done in a long time. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t remember awakening more refreshed than I was that next morning.

Feeling fine lasted about as long as it took to change into fresh clothes and drive with Holland to the seaside neighborhood of Point Loma, where Al Demaerschalk shared a two-story duplex with Quentin Demaerschalk, Al’s squat, sixty-something son.

“My father had a stroke,” Quentin said without emotion, standing inside his front door. He wore baggy shorts and an oversized aloha shirt with little pink palm trees in a vain effort to camouflage his basketball-sized breadbasket, along with one of those ridiculous little Vandyke beards to hide his many chins.

“Al had a stroke?” Holland’s voice caught in his throat. “Where is he? Is he OK?”

“Up at Scripps. He’s not expected to live.”

Holland tottered on the front steps like he’d been pushed by a gust of wind. I steadied him.

“When was this?” I asked.

“Last night,” Quentin said as a dark-haired, wide-bodied woman wearing turquoise medical scrubs appeared behind him in the doorway. “Somebody found him in his car on the side of the road up in Escondido. God only knows where he was going. This is my wife, Blair. I’m sorry, you are…?”

“My name’s Logan.”

Blair ignored me and scowled at Holland.

“Al wasn’t fooling anybody, Dutch. We all know he’s been staying with you out at the airport. We tried calling, but obviously you don’t have a cell phone, which is no surprise. Nobody your age does. It’s just too complicated, isn’t it?”

Al Demaerschalk’s daughter-in-law reminded me of the Wicked Witch of the West, only not nearly so nice.

Holland was starting to totter on his feet. I was afraid he might have a stroke, too.

“Can he sit down inside for a minute? He needs to catch his breath.”

Blair looked over at her husband, pursing her lips, as if to say, “You decide.”

Quentin shook his head and exhaled like he was none too happy about letting us inside his house, then reluctantly stood aside, holding open the screen door for us.

The living room was a tribute to tacky. I helped Holland to one of two purple chairs, which matched the couch. Wax blobs floated surreally in a lava lamp on a glass-topped coffee table held up by deer antlers.

“Would it be too much trouble to get him a glass of water?”

Blair sighed, put off, and headed into the kitchen.

“Look,” Quentin said to me, “it’s not that we’re bad people. It’s just that, maybe if my father had been in some kind of assisted care facility, where he belonged in the first place instead of hanging out at the airport all the time, the doctors could’ve done something to save him. But now…” He stared down at his sandaled feet, shaking his head.

Holland’s chin trembled as he fought back his tears. “Al’s a good joe. Even if he can’t hear worth a hoot.”

Blair arrived with a glass of ice water and handed it to him.

“What did you say to him, Dutch?” she demanded.

Holland looked up at her with a confused look. “Say to him?”

“He’s been behaving super weird the last few days,” Blair said. “He came over here the night before last, went to his room, shut the door, and wouldn’t come out. Said he was scared but wouldn’t say why.”

Quentin Demaerschalk rubbed his ear. “Did something happen to my father out at the airport, Dutch?”

Holland looked up at me as if to say, “Help me out here, will ya?”

“Your father may have seen somebody tampering with the engine on my airplane,” I said to Quentin. “He apparently was scared that whoever did it might come after him if they knew he’d seen them. He also was afraid it would give you reason to put him out to pasture.”

Quentin’s eyes pooled. “Crap,” he said softly, then turned and disappeared down a hallway.

The duplex’s windows rattled as turbine engines roared overhead. An airliner was climbing out of Lindbergh. Al Demaerschalk’s daughter-in-law kneeled next to Holland. Gone was her scowl.

“I’m sorry, Dutch. I know how close you and my father-in-law are.” She took his hand. “I know he thinks the world of you.”

Maybe she wasn’t so witchy after all.

Quentin returned, fisting tears from his eyes and clutching a scrap of paper. “I found this on the carpet under his bed. He must’ve dropped it right before he left because I vacuumed that afternoon.”

He handed me the paper. It was torn from an AARP mailer. Scrawled shakily in an old man’s palsied hand were the letters, “CAPCAFLR.”

“Maybe it has something to do with what he saw at the airport,” Quentin said.

Maybe. Or maybe it was nothing, the erratic ramblings of an ancient brain verging on implosion.

I tucked the paper in my pocket.

Dutch Holland took off his glasses. Tears streaked his cheeks. “Al can’t have a stroke. He’s five years younger than me. It makes no sense.”

“C’mon, Dutch. Let’s get you home.”

I helped him up and walked him outside. Quentin came waddling out after us on our way to the car.

“Wait.”

Holland turned.

“I know my father would’ve wanted you to have this,” Quentin said, putting something small in the palm of Dutch Holland’s hand.

It was a military medal, a Silver Star.

The old man clutched it tightly, as if holding on to Al Demaerschalk himself.

* * *

After dropping Holland back home and making sure he was squared away emotionally, I sat in the airport parking lot and called Buzz. He said he couldn’t talk long. He and other analysts were closing in on a particularly virulent terrorist cell they’d been stalking for months.

“Screw flying 767’s into skyscrapers. That’s so last week. Now these douche bags are trying to poison the food supply,” Buzz said.

“One more reason to say no to broccoli.”

“Well, there is something to be said for that.”

“I need you to check something out for me.”

“Did you not hear what I just said, Logan? I’m trying to save the Free World over here.”

“You can’t do it on your coffee break?”

“There are no coffee breaks in the global war on terror, Logan, or whatever the President is calling it this month. Maybe you’ve been out of the fight so long you’ve forgotten that.”

“I’ll buy you another CD. Placido Domingo’s greatest hits.”

“I’m still waiting on The Three Tenors.”

I told him about what had happened to my airplane.

“You still flying that rust bucket? Whadda you call it – the ‘Pregnant Goose’?”

“The Ruptured Duck. And, yeah, Buzz, I’m still flying it – or was, until somebody tried to kill me in it.”

“Who’d be stupid enough to try something like that?”

“That’s what I’m hoping you can help me find out.”

I read him phonetically what was on the slip of paper that Al Demaerschalk’s son had found in his father’s room.

“Charlie-Alpha-Papa-Charlie-Alpha-Foxtrot-Lima-Romeo,” Buzz repeated, making sure he had it right. “What is that, some kind of acronym?”

“I have no idea. But a code breaker might.”

Buzz sighed resignedly. “I’ll get back to you when I can.”

“Thanks, Buzz.”

I went to push the red button on my phone.

“Hey, Logan?”

“Yup?”

“Screw Placido Domingo. If you’re gonna get me another CD, get me Pavarotti’s greatest hits. The guy makes Placido look like a talentless punk.”

“Pavarotti it is.”

I was hoping Buzz would reach out to his cryptologist contacts at the National Counterterrorism Center, geeky geniuses whose idea of happy hour was chugging Red Bulls while hashing out unsolved mathematical theorems. If anybody could figure out what “CAPCAFLR” meant, it was them.

Sixteen

I tried calling Mrs. Schmulowitz yet again to see how she was faring after her tummy tuck. A computerized voice said the memory on her answering machine was full and not accepting any more messages. My concern for her welfare was quickly escalating from worry to dread. Had there been surgical complications? Had she returned home and suffered an accident? What if she was lying on her kitchen floor with a fractured hip, unable to move? Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! My mind raced with the ominous possibilities. In my haste to jump in my airplane and fly down from Rancho Bonita to San Diego, I hadn’t thought to ask for the name and telephone number of Mrs. Schmulowitz’s physician.

Dumb.

Neither hospital in Rancho Bonita could find any record of her having been admitted. I sat in my rented Escalade, in the parking lot outside the Montgomery Airport terminal, and fretted. Somebody needed to check on her as soon as possible. Problem was, I was more than 200 miles away. Fighting my way through the log-jammed freeways of Orange County and Los Angeles would take six hours at least.

Larry’s repair shop at the Rancho Bonita Municipal Airport was a ten-minute drive from Mrs. Schmulowitz’s house. I called him, but there was no answer.

The only other person I could think of was my ex-wife. She could be in Rancho Bonita, depending on traffic, in less than two hours. She picked up on the third ring.

“It’s me.”

“Are you OK?”

“I’m fine. Still down in San Diego. You got home all right?”

“Yes.”

Strained silence. She was clearly still irked at me.

“I need a favor, Savannah.”

The health of any friendship or romance can be gauged in the response to that one simple request. If the answer is an automatic, “Absolutely,” you can bet you’ve got a good thing going. If the answer is, “What is it?” it might be time to punch out.

“Sure.”

My heart danced, even if I don’t.

I explained that Mrs. Schmulowitz had undergone cosmetic surgery, that she wasn’t answering her phone, and that I was worried. Would Savannah mind driving up to Rancho Bonita to make sure she was OK – and checking on the welfare of my cat while she was at it?

“You can be there in an hour and a half, Savannah. I’ll pay you back.”

“Pay me back how?”

“We never did make it to SeaWorld.”

“C’mon, Logan, you can do better than that.”

“OK, I’ll throw in the Wild Animal Park, too.”

“What if you just started being more sensitive to the feelings of others?”

“I suppose I could do that.”

“Good.”

“So you’ll go?”

Savannah said she was just finishing her notes following a counseling session with a client, and could be on her way within the hour.

“I’ll let you know what I find when I get there,” she said. “I just hope she’s OK.”

I could’ve said, “That makes two of us.” What I said instead was, “You’re a good woman, Savannah.”

She seemed pleased.

As I hung up, a black, unmarked police car rolled into the lot and pulled up beside my rented Escalade so that the driver’s side windows were facing each other. Behind the wheel was Detective Alicia Rosario. She was alone.

“I was just over at Hub Walker’s house,” she said. “Wanted to ask him a few questions on the Bollinger homicide. He said if you were still in town, this is where I’d find you.”

“What was so important, you couldn’t just call me?”

She shut off the engine, got out of her cruiser, and got in on the passenger’s side of my Escalade.

“Hub Walker won the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

“It’s not Congressional Medal of Honor, Detective. It’s just ‘Medal of Honor.’ And you don’t ‘win’ it. You receive it.”

Rosario gave me a hard sideways look. She didn’t like being lectured.

“Something doesn’t smell right about your Medal of Honor recipient,” she said.

I said nothing.

“Hub Walker and Janet Bollinger were involved in a car accident the day after Dorian Munz was executed. Are you aware of that?”

“I heard something along those lines. Doesn’t make Walker a murderer.”

“Agreed,” Rosario said. “But when I was talking to him about what happened to Bollinger, he seemed a little, I don’t know…” Her words trailed off.

“Like he knew something you didn’t?”

She nodded as she gazed out at the runway, trying to piece the puzzle together. “Janet Bollinger starts dating Dorian Munz after her good friend, Ruth Walker, breaks up with him. Munz goes on trial for murdering Walker, Bollinger testifies against him, Munz is executed, then Bollinger gets stabbed to death—stabbed, not shot. Pulling a trigger, that’s easy. But stabbing somebody to death? Feeling that blade cutting through flesh? Man, you gotta want that person dead pretty bad.”

“So I’ve been told.”

I asked her about the status of Bunny Myers and Myers’ gangbanging cousin, Li’l Sinister, who’d tried to make me fly them to Mexico. Rosario said sheriff’s forensics investigators had found both of their fingerprints inside Janet Bollinger’s apartment. They’d also found two ceramic Hummel figurines in the trunk of Li’l Sinister’s car that they believed were stolen from Bollinger.

“Bunny told me he never went inside the apartment,” I said.

“He told me he did. Him and his cousin. They go in, see Janet Bollinger bleeding on the floor, and rabbit. Zuniga grabs a couple of Hummels on the way out the door.”

“Why steal Hummels?”

“His mother’s birthday was coming up.”

“Nice.”

“I don’t know if Walker was involved in Bollinger’s homicide, directly or not,” Rosario said, “but if we end up going after a Medal of Honor recipient, the sensitivity of that, in a military town like this?…”

“You never answered my question, Detective.”

Rosario looked over at me with her head cocked.

“What was so important, you drove all the way over here to talk to me in person?”

She hesitated, then turned and locked her eyes on mine. “I get the impression, Mr. Logan, there are things in this case you’re not telling me, either.”

I realized that if I filled her in on what Dutch Holland’s pilot buddy, Al Demaerschalk, had seen that night at the airport, and what FAA inspector Paul Horvath had found inside my engine – that someone had purposely tried to bring down the Ruptured Duck, perhaps to thwart a homicide investigation – Rosario would call in the cavalry. That meant the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board and, for all I knew, half the Marine Corps. And that, as far as my ambitions were concerned, was a nonstarter.

I learned serving with Alpha that there is not always strength in numbers. Too many hunters can trample the trail. Often, the most effective way to locate a target is to be small and stealthy, and to leave as few footprints as possible. That was my plan, so that I might find and personally punish whoever had done me and my airplane harm. Vengeance may not be very Buddhist-like, I realized, but then again, neither are chile verde burritos.

“I’ve told you everything I can,” I told Rosario.

“Can or will?”

She could smell the lie on me as easily as I did.

* * *

Paul Horvath was leaning into the Ruptured Duck’s mangled engine compartment, snapping close-up digital photographs of the carburetor, when I stopped by. I was anxious to have my plane trucked to Rancho Bonita as soon as possible so that Larry could begin piecing it back together, and I could get back to being a flight instructor whose business, putting it diplomatically, afforded abundant room for growth.

“Take a look at this,” Horvath said. “I didn’t notice it until just now.”

He pushed on the head of the carburetor drain plug with the tip of his index finger. The plug jiggled in its socket like a loose screw.

“Whoever put this plug back the last time didn’t tighten it down with a wrench. They just hand-tightened it. Engine vibration would’ve shaken it loose, I’d say no more than fifteen or twenty minutes after takeoff, and there goes your fuel supply. Not only that: now you’ve got flammable gas splashing on a crankcase operating at near 400 degrees centigrade. Gasoline ignites at 257 degrees. You literally would’ve gone down in flames.”

First the engine’s breather line. Now, the carburetor drain plug.

“One way or the other,” Horvath said, “somebody meant to bring this airplane down.”

“Somebody who knows planes.”

The FAA man nodded and asked me if I had any enemies.

“How much time you got?”

Horvath smiled and snapped another photo, his eye twitching. He said he’d spoken with airport administrators and was frustrated to learn that surveillance cameras covered only about half of the gated entrances to Montgomery’s flight line – and that of the cameras in use, many didn’t capture images well after dark. No camera, he said, had been angled in the direction of my airplane the night it was sabotaged. Officials planned to go through what videotape there was, but it would likely take months. As for security gates, only about half were equipped with computerized keypads that recorded the comings and goings of authorized users whom airport officials had assigned individual pass codes. The other gates relied on old-fashioned, three-digit mechanical punch codes that rarely changed.

“The bottom line,” Horvath said, “is that security at most small airports, including this one, leaks like a sieve.”

Should I have shared with him the information that Dutch Holland had conveyed to me, about Al Demaerschalk having witnessed a man cloaked in coveralls and a baseball cap getting out of a pickup truck to open the Duck’s cowling? Probably. But, as with Detective Rosario, my desires did not revolve so much around seeing justice served as they did retaliation.

“How long before I get my plane back?”

“Not for awhile.”

“Can you be any more specific?”

“Wish I could, Mr. Logan. It’s not up to me.”

Horvath said he would turn over a final report to his supervisors, detailing his findings on the accident, probably within two weeks. His supervisors would then review the report before kicking it upstairs to FAA headquarters in Washington, D.C. It would be up to the aviation bigwigs there to decide when to release the Duck back to my care. The good news, Horvath said, was that his report would indicate the crash was in no way the result of pilot error. It was unavoidable, the apparent consequence of a criminal act.

“If anything, Mr. Logan, you probably deserve a commendation. That was a fine piece of airmanship, getting back down without incurring any injuries to your passengers or anyone on the ground. You should be proud of yourself.”

“I just want my plane back, Mr. Horvath.”

He nodded like he understood what was in my head.

* * *

Defense attorney Charles Dowd said he had an urgent need to speak with me. About what he wouldn’t reveal over the phone, but the anxiety in his voice was palpable as I walked from the hangar housing the Ruptured Duck to my rental car.

“Is there somewhere we can meet? I’d prefer it be away from my office.”

“I’m at Montgomery Airport,” I said “There’s a Mexican restaurant inside the terminal, upstairs. We could meet there if you want.”

Dowd paused. “I’m not too familiar with that part of town.”

Not familiar with that part of town? San Diego may be a large city, but it’s not exactly Beijing. Hadn’t Dowd mentioned when we first met that he’d been practicing law locally for more than twenty-five years? How could he claim not to know his way around a community after living and working in it a quarter-century? Either he didn’t get out much or he was lying. But why be evasive? Had Dowd been involved in what happened to my airplane and now wanted to throw me off whatever trail might lead me back to him? For his own safety, I hoped not.

“We can meet wherever you want,” I said.

The attorney suggested a bar in Imperial Beach that was located, curiously enough, less than three blocks from the late Janet Bollinger’s apartment. I told him I was on my way.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

I had no idea what Dowd wanted to discuss, or whether he posed a legitimate threat. Still, if I learned anything toiling for Uncle Sugar, it’s that the quickest way to end up on the wrong side of the grass is to assume that anyone is innocent. That includes attorneys. Especially attorneys.

Driving from the airport eastbound toward the 805 freeway, I spotted a small scuba diving supply shop and pulled in. The manager was about my age. He looked like he’d spent about twenty years too long in the sun.

“Help you find something?”

I told him I needed a knife. He asked me with a grin if I was worried about sharks.

“You could say that.”

He unlocked the back of a display case, unsheathed a knife, and laid it on the glass countertop.

“Top-of-the-line. Pure titanium for durability, sharpness, hardness, strength and abrasion resistance. One hundred percent corrosion resistant and guaranteed not to rust. That’s why it’s the official knife of Delta and the Green Berets.”

Spoken like a true chair-borne commando. Anyone familiar with Special Forces knows that when it comes to knives, nothing is official. Operators carry whatever feels best in their hands. I counted among my friends any number of hard-chargers who never even packed a knife. Why get yourself all bloody, they reasoned, when the government issues you unlimited bullets and silencer-equipped firearms?

“How much?” I asked, hefting the blade.