“What’s done is done, Hub.”
“I only wish.” He looked over at me, fisting tears from his eyes. “After you left the airfield today, your mechanic buddy, Larry, told me you used to work some kind of intelligence assignment. Said he didn’t know much about it. Said the Los Angeles police couldn’t figure out who killed your ex-wife’s husband and you did. That true?”
Where to begin? Yes, it was true that after my fighter pilot days were cut short by a gimpy knee from days playing football for the Academy, I was transferred to Air Force intelligence and eventually to a Tier One Ultra unit within the Defense Department code-named “Alpha,” where operators were referred to as “go-to guys.” We functioned essentially as human guided missiles, hunting down terrorists abroad. That was before the White House got wind of our operations and shut us down for fear of political backlash. And, yes, it was true that I’d reluctantly agreed to assist in the murder investigation of the lowlife my ex-wife, Savannah, had left me for — Arlo Echevarria, my former Alpha commander — but only because her father had offered me $25,000 to do so. I’d subsequently spent most of that money covering an engine overhaul on my airplane, and paying Larry some of the back rent I owed him, which more or less put me back in the financial doghouse. Hub Walker, however, didn’t need to hear all that. So I responded to his question with what I concluded was a brilliantly deflecting one of my own:
“What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”
“I want you to help prove that Greg Castle had nothing to do with my daughter’s murder.”
I looked at him, not understanding. “Unless I’m mistaken, Hub, you just said the evidence against this guy, Dorian Munz, was ‘thicker than maggots on a dead possum.’ I assume the jury must’ve agreed, or else they wouldn’t have put him on the bus to hell. Or am I missing something here?”
Apparently I was.
As Walker described it, when Munz was asked if he had anything to say before being executed, he said plenty. He had proclaimed his innocence, as he’d done many times before. Only this time, he asserted that Ruth Walker had been murdered after discovering that her boss, Greg Castle, had been bilking the Defense Department out of millions of dollars in fraudulent overcharges. According to Munz, Castle killed Ruth — or paid somebody to kill her — before she could go to the feds with proof. While Munz’s allegations failed to produce the reprieve that he’d hoped for, they did generate widespread news reports in San Diego.
“The press,” Walker said, “lapped it up.”
The result was a public relations nightmare for Castle Robotics and for Castle personally. The company’s chances of securing Defense Department contracts were in jeopardy, as was Castle’s marriage.
“I’ve known Greg Castle for years,” Walker said. “He’s a good family man. Honorable as the day is long. I know he had nothin’ to do with Ruthie’s murder. But that’s not the impression everybody in San Diego has, what with everything Munz said before he died. You spend a week or so snooping around, get me something I can throw the news media, something to show that Munz was talking out the side of his filthy, lying mouth before they executed him, and I’ll pay you $10,000, plus expenses.”
“I’m a flight instructor, Hub, not Kojak.”
“But you did used to work intelligence assignments, correct?” Hub said.
I shrugged.
“Well, that means in my book you were an investigator. And I got an inclination that if you were as good at investigating as you are flying, it’ll be money well spent.”
“Come down to San Diego,” Crissy said. “You can stay with us. We have a very nice place in La Jolla. Bring your wife. I’m sure she’d enjoy a little vacation.”
“I’m not married.”
“Well, you must have a girlfriend.”
I shook my head.
“Boyfriend?” Walker said with one eyebrow raised.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Crissy quickly added.
“What I have is a cat. And that relationship is definitely on shaky ground.”
“Sounds to me like what you need is The Cat Communicator.”
I looked at her.
“It’s a reality show,” Crissy said enthusiastically. “He’s like The Dog Whisperer, only he deals with badly behaved cats. People call him up when they’re having problems with their kitties. He comes over and straightens them out.”
“The Cat Communicator. Can’t say I’ve ever seen it.”
“That’s because it’s still in development. That’s what I do. I’m a TV producer — trying to be, anyway.”
I wondered how many episodes of The Cat Communicator would involve issues such as retaliatory scratching and urination.
“Here’s the deal,” Hub said, “Larry told me you’re short on flight students right now. We both know you could use the money. Plus, it’d be a way for Crissy and me to pay you back for all that you did for us today, helping us get through that cloud deck and all.”
A quote from Thoreau bubbled up from the tar pits of my brain, an artifact from my Air Force Academy days. The first time I’d heard it was during my doolie year, when a fourth-year cadet upbraided me in a hallway after I deigned to point out that being a military pilot afforded certain privileges, not the least of which was earning a livable wage. Leaning in close, his nose squishing mine, the upperclassman reminded me that one joins the armed forces of the United States to serve his country, not to service his bank account. “Money,” he seethed, “is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.”
Maybe not. But money is required to cover the bills, of which I unfortunately had plenty.
Hub Walker jotted down his cell phone number on his wife’s cocktail napkin and slid it across the table. I said I’d sleep on his offer and get back to him in the morning.
Kiddiot, THE world’s dumbest cat, sniffed his dish as if the chow I’d just served him had been stored in a Cold War-era fallout shelter.
“Ten million cats starving to death in China, who would all kill for a can of Savory Salmon Feast in Delectable Gravy, and you act like the health department’s gonna come barging in here any minute and arrest me on code violations.”
Kiddiot flicked his orange bottlebrush tail like he was annoyed, which was his default state, and climbed out his cat door, departing the converted two-car garage apartment that was our home. I couldn’t much fault his disinterest in the plat du jour. My eighty-eight-year-old landlady, Mrs. Schmulowitz, a retired elementary school P.E. teacher, frequently served him chopped liver with fresh Nova Scotia lox — on fine china, no less. I probably would’ve turned up my nose at canned Savory Salmon Feast, too, gravy or no gravy.
I showered and shampooed, flossed and brushed, trimmed my beard, eased into bed, and turned off the light. Mindful of my breathing, I tried to relax my mind, to reach that elusively transcendental state of enlightenment that real Buddhists are always clucking about, the one I’ve never come close to reaching, the one that would’ve allowed me to consider Hub Walker’s offer of employment with complete, objective clarity. That was the plan, anyway. I was asleep before I knew it, dreaming about the only man I ever stabbed to death.
He was toking on a hash pipe, standing outside the alley entrance of an Amsterdam brothel where two Algerian brothers, both al-Qaeda financiers, were enjoying an evening out. To eliminate the brothers, my Alpha team members and I would first have to dispatch their bodyguard. I drew the job. My heart pounded in my ears as I eased in from behind and crooked my arm around his chest to stop him from reaching his shoulder holster, then thrust the tip of my blade into the side of his neck, slicing outward to hopefully avoid the blood spray and prevent him from shouting out. I was lowering his limp body to the ground when my cell phone rang me awake.