“Truth be told,” Carlisle said over his shoulder as I followed him, “it’s good you showed up a little late. We were just wrapping up our meeting.” He led me to a large round table where three men were eating lunch. “Gentlemen, I want y’all to say howdy to Mr. Cordell Logan. Used to be hitched to my daughter.”
Carlisle introduced the man nearest me as Miles Zambelli, his executive assistant and chief financial advisor. Zambelli was in his early thirties. Mediterranean handsome, he wore fancy jeans and a black-striped, untucked dress shirt, tasseled loafers, rimless eyeglasses and a vague air of entitlement. He remained seated as introductions were made, eating and taking notes on a yellow legal pad, while shaking my outstretched hand with all the enthusiasm of a teenager forced to wash the dishes. His gold class ring bore the Harvard coat of arms, which explained a lot.
The others at the table stood respectfully to greet me as I approached. The taller of the two was decked out in beige golf pants and a pale yellow golf shirt, one of those fair-skinned, angularly athletic, mixed-race chaps who look good wearing anything. He was about thirty.
“Say hello to Lamont Royale,” Carlisle said. “Mr. Royale’s my right-hand man. Does my driving, helps me with my golf game and handles the cooking. Hell, if he didn’t have a damn dick, I’d marry the son of a bitch.”
“Call me Lamont, please,” Royale said, shaking my hand.
“Lamont it is.”
The other man Carlisle introduced as Pavel Tarasov, “oil broker extraordinaire.”
“Cordell Logan,” I said, “oil consumer.”
He parted his jaws, displaying a set of teeth so white against his tanned face that my eyes hurt just looking at them. I wasn’t sure if he was smiling or planning to bite me.
“I like this guy,” Tarasov said, gripping my hand firmly and a little too long, his accent faintly Russian. He had dark, intelligent eyes and black, well-barbered hair. His grooming, tailored business suit, and the $20,000 Rolex lashed to his left wrist advertised a man of assets and taste. Only his hands, meaty and speckled with scar tissue, seemed out of character with the rest of him. The kind of hands more familiar with physical labor than laboring behind a desk. Hands that had no business protruding from the starched sleeves of a white dress shirt with French cuffs and blue garnet cuff links.
An attentive waiter whose name-tag identified him as “Steve” slid a chair over for me from another table without being asked and waited for us to settle.
“Gentlemen,” Carlisle said, gesturing.
We sat.
Steve the waiter handed me a menu and asked if I’d like something to drink. The others were sharing a bottle of red wine. I myself was in a vodka martini mood. Chilled. With two fat Spanish olives. Then I remembered that I still had to fly myself home. Then I remembered that I don’t drink. I hadn’t touched a drop of liquor in seven years, ever since I’d quit working for the government.
“I’ll take an Arnie.”
“One Arnold Palmer, coming up,” Steve said, and left to go fetch my drink.
“Mr. Carlisle tells me you are crackerjack instructor pilot,” Tarasov said pleasantly.
“It keeps me off the streets.”
“When I was boy, I dreamed to fly fighter jets. The MiG, yes? But my marks in school, they were, how do you say, shit? My father, he makes with his hands the chairs, tables. Anything you want, he can make. He teaches me how to use the tools, cutting the wood. Rich people, they love my furniture. I sell to Princess Diana armoire. Chest of drawers to king of Saudi Arabia.”
“Not to brag, but I’m somewhat the fine furniture maker myself.”
“Truly?”
“Let’s just say they know me on a first-name basis at a certain Swedish furniture warehouse where, by the way, the meatballs and lingonberries are delicious.”
Lamonte Royale laughed. No one else got the joke.
“So,” I said to Tarasov, “what brings you to California?”
“Grapes,” Tarasov said, refilling his wine glass.
“Mr. Tarasov is thinking about acquiring a few vineyards,” Carlisle said. “He flew in to look over some properties. We decided El Molino would be mutually convenient for us to get together and hash out strategy on another little venture we’re considering partnering up on.” Carlisle leaned in close to me, his elbows on the table, his voice decidedly lower. “You ever hear of the Kashagan oil field?”
I hadn’t.
“In Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea,” he said. “Supposed to be the biggest find in fifty years.”
“A hundred years,” Zambelli said.
“The biggest find in history,” Tarasov said. “All we need are a few more investors, and the controlling share will be ours.”
Steve the waiter ferried my lemonade-iced tea to the table and set it down on a paper coaster. “Have you had a chance to decide?”
I pointed to what Zambelli was eating. “I’ll try some of that.”
“Pistachio-encrusted halibut,” Steve said. “Excellent choice.”
Carlisle waited until he moved off, then leaned in once more and said, “If that field comes in the way our geologists think it will, even the smallest fractional owner’ll be a billionaire. It’ll make Bill Gates look like a hobo.”
“I’m obviously in the wrong line of work,” I said, only half-kidding.
“Hell, that’s what I told my daughter when she married you,” Carlisle said, chuckling.
“What did you tell her when she married Echevarria?”
Carlisle’s smile melted. “I like you, Cordell. Always have. The day you and Savannah parted ways, I’ll tell you what, the two of us cried our eyes out like babies.”
I sipped my drink. If my former father-in-law was ill at ease revealing such personal intimacies in front of a potential business partner, he didn’t show it. Nor did they. It was Zambelli who seemed most uncomfortable with his boss’s candor.
“Mr. Carlisle,” he said, clearing his throat, “I suggest such matters might be better discussed between you and Mr. Logan in a more private setting.”
“I got nothing to hide from this man,” Carlisle said, gesturing to Tarasov. “If we’re gonna be in business together, he needs to know who I am and where I’m coming from. What you see is what you get. No more, no less.”
“Honesty in all endeavors,” Tarasov said.
Carlisle told him how the second husband of his daughter Savannah had died tragically in Los Angeles at the hands of a killer unknown. The case remained unsolved. He said he hoped to persuade Savannah’s first husband, namely me, to pass along any relevant information about Echevarria to the police, given that I had once worked for Echevarria in marketing. Carlisle said he was confident my help could make all the difference in the police solving the case.
“To truth and justice,” Tarasov said, hoisting his wine goblet.
“And the American way,” Lamont Royale added with a smile.
“Like Superman,” Tarasov said, impressed with himself that he actually got the joke.
They all clinked goblets.
“Truth, justice, and the American way,” I said, tepidly raising my glass.
I glanced over at Zambelli. His eyes never left his plate.
FIVE
I lifted off from El Molino that afternoon with a bellyful of halibut and $25,000 in my pocket, drawn on Gilbert Carlisle’s personal account at the Bank of Bimini. The money had come with one stipulation: Savannah was never to know that her father had paid me to talk to the police. I was to tell her only that I’d had a change of heart and decided to cooperate with the authorities because I realized it was the right thing to do. Or some such nonsense. Carlisle was so confident I would take his money that he’d had the cashier’s check drafted the day before we met, according to the bank time stamp on the stub.
If the LAPD knew that I’d been paid to enlighten them about what Echevarria once did for a living, they would likely dismiss my information as less than objective. Carlisle didn’t want that. Neither did I. Much as I hated to admit it, I was becoming increasingly curious about who might’ve murdered my former co-worker and romantic rival.