Czarnek stayed put, eyeing me. “Mrs. Echevarria told us she used to be your wife.”

“She was. I never knew what true happiness was until we got married. Then it was too late.”

“Why’d you break up, you don’t mind me asking?”

“She dumped me.”

“Why?” Windhauser demanded

“Because she fell in love with Echevarria.”

Czarnek stopped chewing his gum. The detectives traded another look. Windhauser righted his chair and lowered himself into it.

“How exactly would you describe your relationship with your ex-wife?” Windhauser said.

“Strained.”

“What about with Mr. Echevarria?” Czarnek said. “What kind of relationship did you have with him?”

“We had no relationship. Not after what he did to me.”

“So, what you’re saying is, the two of you stopped being friends after your wife left you for him. Is that what you’re saying?”

I didn’t say anything. I could see where this was going. Czarnek reached into the breast pocket of his sport coat and got out a reporter’s notebook. He flipped through the narrow pages to find where he’d jotted down the date of Echevarria’s murder— October 24th. He asked me if I remembered what I was doing that night.

“It was a Monday,” Czarnek added.

“I would’ve been watching football.”

“By yourself?”

“With my landlady.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“She makes me dinner every Monday night during football season. We always watch the game together.”

“You two ever get it on?” Windhauser said. “Maybe at halftime?”

Another tactic from the Big Book of Standard Police Interrogation Techniques: Bad Cop periodically lets fly an outrageous accusation intended to infuriate the suspect who comes unglued and, in his unbridled anger, blurts the truth of his crime.

“My landlady is in her eighties,” I said. “She only goes for old guys, Detective Windhauser. Like you.”

Windhauser glared. His partner stifled a smile.

“You pretty sure she can vouch for your whereabouts that evening?” Czarnek asked.

“You’ll have to ask her that.”

“We intend to,” Windhauser said.

The detectives were staring at me in a new light, a light that told me even though I was the one who’d called them, I was now suspect numero uno in the homicide of Arlo Echevarria.

SIX

Inside the walled fortress that is America’s intelligence community, analysts are trained to scientifically consider all possible explanations when trying to determine who bombed the jetliner or blew up the office tower. Unfortunately, intelligence analysts are human. Like all humans, they quickly form opinions as to guilt or innocence, then instinctively pursue the evidence that will buttress their preconceived beliefs. Evidence that conflicts with those preconceptions is commonly disregarded. Which is why we sometimes end up invading the wrong country.

Professionals in other occupations are no different. A patient complains of a stomachache. His doctor concludes that the patient must have indigestion or an ulcer because the last five patients he treated with similar symptoms had indigestion or an ulcer. The patient is sent home with antibiotics or a bottle of Tums and dies that night from a burst appendix. Two LAPD homicide detectives conclude that an ex-husband murdered the man his wife left him for because the detectives have investigated dozens of murders over the years and it is always the ex-husband or former boyfriend who did it.

Still, I walked out of El Grande Taqueria that day a free man. No handcuffs. No threats of, “We’re going to have to take you down to the station for further questioning.” Czarnek thanked me for agreeing to meet with them. He asked me if I would be willing to take a polygraph test at some point in the near future. I said I wouldn’t mind at all. He said they’d be in touch and urged me to have a nice day, while Windhauser said nothing. I could tell by the way they watched me as I got in my truck, parked two spaces down from their unmarked Crown Vic, that it wouldn’t matter whether I passed a lie-detector test or not. They’d already made up their minds about who murdered Arlo Echevarria. Like intelligence analysts, now all they had to do was make the pieces fit their puzzle.

I waited for a break in the traffic, then burned an illegal U-turn across three lanes of traffic while my new friends from the LAPD watched. I tossed them a casual wave and motored south on Verde Street, feeling a sense of relief. I’d done what my ex-wife wanted me to do, done what my ex-father-in-law had paid me to do. I’d told the police what I knew about the real Arlo Echevarria. If they didn’t want to hear it, that was their problem. As far as I was concerned, I had fulfilled my end of the deal. I may still have been curious about who murdered Echevarria, but not so curious that I was willing to become more involved than I already was. Goddamn Savannah. I couldn’t decide which I regretted more, cashing her father’s check or not having been born rich.

She’s nothing to you anymore, I told myself.

I almost believed it.

The light turned red at Federal Avenue, across the street from the old post office that was now a carpet showroom. A homeless guy was on the sidewalk out front, smoking a joint. Curled asleep beside him was a long, fat dog that looked like it had been assembled by committee. A hand-lettered cardboard sign was propped against the man’s legs. It said, “Ninjas kidnapped my family. Need money for Kung Fu lessons.” I tossed him a buck. Fair pay for a good laugh.

The light turned green. I hooked a right at the traffic circle and merged onto the freeway northbound, heading for the airport.

Larry was sitting at a weathered picnic table in the shade behind his hangar, listening to Rush Limbaugh on a portable radio and eating his lunch — bologna and cheese sandwich, bag-o-chips and a Dr. Pepper. Larry had the same thing for lunch every day. Once, I heard him complain to his wife about the way she’d made his sandwich. “How many times I gotta tell ya,” he seethed low into the phone, “you put the fuckin’ cheese between the fuckin’ slices of bologna.” I believe it was the last sandwich she ever made him.

“I got your money,” I said out the window as I pulled in and climbed out of my truck. “All of it.”

“Call CNN,” Larry said. “They’re gonna definitely wanna break into regular programming for this.”

“You know, Larry, for a comedian, you make a pretty piss-poor airplane mechanic.”

I sat down opposite him at the picnic table and wrote out a check.

Larry picked crumbs out of his arm fur, watching me. “What’d you do, rob a bank or something?”

“Ex-father-in-law.”

“You robbed your ex-father-in-law?”

“More or less.”

I gave him the check. Larry folded it without looking at it and put it in his wallet.

“You been subleasing from me for, what, two years? That’s the first time I’ve heard you say word one about family.”

“He’s not family.”

“Used to be, though, right?” Larry said.

“How ’bout them Dodgers?” I said.

Larry grunted and finished his soda. My phone rang. The caller was male and foreign. His inflection was Spanish or Romanian, possibly Moldovan. Sort of like Dracula, only younger and hipper.

He said his name was Eugen Dragomir, and that he was a student at Cal State Rancho Bonita, whose campus was just up the road from the airport. The kid had seen my listing on Craigslist, he said, and was interested in learning to fly. Every other flight school between Camarillo and San Luis Obispo advertised online. Splashy, colorful web sites with animated graphics and streaming video testimonials from their many satisfied students. The fact that Dragomir could find no such web site for Above the Clouds Aviation, let alone any mention of it on Google, impressed him.