“Well, what do you think?”

“I think your star on the Walk of Fame awaits.”

She blew me a kiss and strode outside in her baton twirler outfit to meet her adoring public.

I called the number on the business card she’d given me from Detective Ostrow of the Rancho Bonita Police Department. Ostrow’s machine answered.

“Hi, this is Kyle Ostrow. I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message. If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 9-1-1.”

He sounded like he was in his twenties. Laid-back California surfer-dude inflection. I said why I was calling and left my cell number. My next call was to Savannah. She didn’t answer, either. After the beep, I said, “It’s me. I’m returning your car.”

Nobody followed me down to LA.

Savannah wasn’t home. Her housekeeper, Alameda, informed me through the speaker box at the security gate that the lady of the house had taken a taxi to go counsel a client. Alameda wasn’t sure when she’d be home. I told her I’d be back.

The “Find Shopping” feature on the Jaguar’s dash-mounted GPS guided me out of the Hollywood Hills, past the CBS studios, and down to the flats of Los Angeles’ Fairfax District, to a Kmart on 3rd Street. Into my shopping cart I tossed a six-pack of boxer shorts made in China, a twelve-pack of crew socks made in Costa Rica, three short-sleeve polo shirts made in Vietnam, two pairs of cargo pants and a pair of jeans made in Malaysia, a gray pullover fleece, also from Malaysia, about a month’s supply of toothpaste, mouthwash, a comb, deodorant and razors, and a medium-size Little Caesars vegetarian pizza from the kiosk near the store’s entrance. As I was loading my toiletries and new wardrobe into the trunk of Savannah’s Jaguar, I realized I’d forgotten a toothbrush.

I went back inside, picked out a blue toothbrush with one of those rubber gum massagers that I can never figure out how to use correctly, and walked to the check-out counter. My phone rang while I stood in line.

“Mr. Logan, hey, what’s up? This is Detective Kyle Ostrow, Rancho Bonita Police Department. Got a sec?”

“What can I do for you, Detective?”

“Well, sir, as I’m sure you’re aware by now, your apartment got burned pretty bad. We’re looking at it as a possible arson.”

“So I heard.”

Forensics, Ostrow said, confirmed that someone had lobbed in a makeshift firebomb. Gasoline had been used as the accelerant. He asked if I knew of anyone who would’ve wanted to do me harm. I suggested he contact Czarnek at the LAPD who could fill him in on the whole story.

“What story would that be?”

“The one I’d prefer not having to spend the next twenty minutes rehashing when Detective Czarnek can provide you all the pertinent details.”

“I’m just trying to help, Mr. Logan. I’m on your side.”

One must be nicer to his fellow human beings if one hopes to return in the next life as something other than a telemarketer or a snail. An earnest, hardworking cop like Ostrow didn’t need another impertinent asshole giving him grief, I realized, so I offered him the Cliffs-Notes version of my resume. About doing things to bad people in the name of national security. About Echevarria’s murder. About the bomb inside Bondarenko’s chest. About being chased on the ground and, while I couldn’t prove it, in the air.

“Wow,” is all Detective Ostrow could say when I was finished.

I gave him Czarnek’s number and signed off.

My fellow Kmart shoppers with whom I’d been waiting in the check-out line avoided eye contact with me. Even though I’d lowered my voice, they had all apparently overheard my conversation with Ostrow. And not only that. I could feel a breeze on the small of my back — my shirt had hiked up, probably when I’d stooped to load Savannah’s trunk in the parking lot. The butt of my revolver was protruding from my waistband for all to see. I casually pulled down my shirt.

A biker chick in line directly behind me — waiting to buy a cartload of coloring books, bath towels, and a new George Foreman grill — glanced anxiously at the uniformed rent-a-cop standing guard near the entrance. The guard was scraping his fingernails with a penknife. He looked old enough to be Mrs. Schmulowitz’s father.

“I’m auditioning for a part on CSI Miami,” I explained. “I play a retired government hit man. Could be my big break.”

You could tell by their lack of response and the way they avoided my eyes that they feared me. Some men like that feeling, the power of it. I never have. Even when I was with Alpha, when survival depended on exercising such power, I did so only because I had to, not because I wanted to. There’s a difference.

I made some lame excuse about forgetting to buy floss and retreated from the check-out line, ditched the toothbrush, and walked past the security guard, out of the store. He never looked up from his fingernails.

“Somebody burned down your apartment? Logan, my God.”

Savannah bit her lip. She said she hoped the fire had nothing to do with her having dragged me into the investigation of Echevarria’s murder, but that she feared there was a correlation.

I was too busy devouring my Kmart pizza over her kitchen sink to offer details about the fire that I’m sure she wanted to hear. Nor did I much feel like cluing her in about how my pilot’s license had been lifted by the feds. So I just ate.

“You’re being uncouth,” Savannah said.

“Au contraire. I’m being green. No washing of extraneous dishes. No wasting of water. Friend of the planet.”

“That’s right. You’re Buddhist now. I forgot.” She picked a mushroom off my pizza without asking my permission and ate it.

“Help yourself,” I said with some sarcasm.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

She grabbed up a slice and ate over the sink with me. I wasn’t going to make an issue of it. She was, after all, letting me stay at her house until I could find more permanent digs. I had accepted reluctantly. It was either that or Mrs. Schmulowitz’s itchy sofa.

“I got a call today from your father’s attorney,” I said. “I didn’t call him back. You wouldn’t happen to know what’s up with that, would you?”

“My father and I aren’t speaking at the moment,” Savannah said. “He’s mad at me. He’s convinced he made a major mistake, asking you to go to the police about Arlo.”

“He wouldn’t have asked me if you hadn’t asked first.”

Savannah was looking at me and I was looking at her, and what was not said between us in that moment could’ve filled an entire shelf of self-help books about longing and coping with loss and how to get laid. That was my take on it, anyway. Who knows what she was really thinking?

“I’m going to bed,” Savannah said, wiping her mouth with a paper towel. “You can turn off the lights when you’re done down here.”

There was a small rip in the left seat of her Levi’s through which I observed flawless skin. No panties. I tried not to stare.

“You got an extra toothbrush I can borrow?”

“Hallway closet. Bottom drawer.”

“Thanks.”

A week earlier, I’d been a humble flight instructor, content, for the most part, to put the past behind me and almost pay my bills. Now here I was, at my ex-wife’s mercy, bunking in her guest room and having to ask her for a goddamn toothbrush because mine had burned up along with virtually everything else I owned. I swore that come morning, I would leave and never look back. Screw her. Screw Echevarria. Screw it all. Maybe I’d fly up to British Columbia, slap a couple of pontoons on the Duck, and make a good living shuttling salmon fishermen in and out of the bush. Or make my way down to the Caribbean and run air charters in and out of Barbados. Bikinis and margaritas. A pilot could get used to that. Yeah, come morning, I told myself, I’d be gone like a hawk on the wing. Then I remembered: I was officially grounded.