I asked him if he’d ever met Janet Bollinger. Again, he looked left, then back to me.
“The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
LaDucrie’s eye movement, his involuntary micro-expressions in response to my questions, had at least been consistent. Either he was telling the truth when he said he may have known Ruth Walker but not Janet Bollinger, or he was lying through his buck teeth about both. I hadn’t known him long enough to accurately gauge which was which.
I asked him how he’d become so passionate about upholding capital punishment. He told me how his sister was murdered at thirteen, lured into a baseball dugout by his Little League coach, who swore he’d only meant to kiss her. Convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Coach Rapist was sentenced to four years in Folsom. He ended up doing half of that.
“The son of a bitch got hit by a car a week after he got out of the joint,” LaDucrie said with a smile as he walked me to his door. “Sometimes, the good Lord has ways of setting things right. Deuteronomy 32–35. ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.’ ”
The Buddha believed that vengeance is pointless. Vengeance can only be met by more vengeance, force with force, bombs with bombs. But, then, the Buddha never knew the pure pleasure of dropping a 500-pound JDAM down the pie hole of an avowed Al Qaeda killer, or putting a 9-millimeter hollow point behind a terrorist’s ear at Helen Keller-can’t-miss range.
I walked through the parking lot of LaDucrie’s condo to my Escalade. The sea breeze carried with it the cannonade of waves crashing onto the beach and the gleeful laughter of children chasing each other among the dunes. Nearly ten years earlier, less than a mile from where I stood, the body of Hub Walker’s daughter had been found amid those very dunes.
I turned and gazed up at the Junkman’s balcony. He’d been living there, I realized, about the same time Ruth Walker was murdered.
Crissy Walker was standing at her kitchen counter, making a smoothie. Her black short shorts showed off her toned tanned legs. The University of Georgia Bulldogs T-shirt she had on highlighted the fact that she was braless. Hub wouldn’t be back until after dinner, she said, dumping banana slices into a food processor. He’d gone to play golf at Torrey Pines with Greg Castle, hoping to convince Castle for his own good to go public with the paternity test he’d taken years earlier. She asked me if I wanted a smoothie. Given that I am not the smoothie type, I politely declined and went to make amends with Savannah.
“She’s not here,” Crissy said before I got to the back door. “I took her to the train station about an hour ago. She said she wanted to go back to LA.”
I couldn’t say I was surprised. Angry women don’t usually lock themselves in guesthouse bathrooms without also formulating escape plans. I recognized that my ex-wife had every right to be mad at me: I’d crashed my airplane and lacked the grace to let her know afterward that I wasn’t dead. Had the shoe been on the other foot, I probably would’ve been just as angry. I wondered whether we would ever get back together, or whether it was even worth endeavoring to try. Staring down at the glossy, terra-cotta tiles of the Walkers’ kitchen floor, I felt at that moment like a sailboat bereft of wind.
“Sure you don’t want a smoothie?” Crissy said, cutting strawberries. “You look like you could definitely use a pick-me-up.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“I bet you are.”
When I looked up, she was smiling at me. I may be a few transistors short of a circuit board when it comes to picking up on the nuances of female communications, but I knew exactly the message Crissy Walker was broadcasting.
“Ryder’s at a playdate until after dinner,” she said, glancing at the digital clock on the microwave. “That gives us two hours.”
“I have nothing but respect for your husband, Crissy.”
“My husband is not here right now.” She glided around the kitchen’s center island biting her lip, her breasts swaying seductively behind her T-shirt, and stood in front of me, closer than was prudent. “No one ever has to know.”
Her fragrance reminded me of scented massage oil. This is what the Playboy Mansion must smell like. She smoothed my collar, then reached up and stroked the side of my face.
“I never properly thanked you for saving our lives, Cordell.”
I gently grabbed her hand and stopped her. “I’m flattered, but…”
Her lips spread slowly into a puzzled half-smile that conveyed something between surprise and self-doubt. “No man has ever said no to me before.”
“I’m not trying to offend you, Crissy. I’m just down here to do a job, that’s all.”
She covered her mouth, embarrassed. “I must need my head examined. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I knew exactly what I was thinking as I watched her hurry out of the kitchen. That a million other red-blooded American guys would’ve killed for the same opportunity I’d just passed up. The Buddha might’ve argued that I had followed a moral path, and that I was a better man for it. But turning down the chance to spend two hours alone with a former Playmate of the Year, no strings attached? Maybe I was the one who needed my head examined.
As far as I was concerned, my work in San Diego was done. All Hub Walker had to do was convince Greg Castle to make public the results of his paternity test, and I could collect on the five large Walker still owed me. I could use the dough to cover the cost of trucking the Ruptured Duck back up to Rancho Bonita. Whatever was left would go directly to Larry to pay down some of the back rent I owed him, along with seed money to begin rebuilding my plane ahead of whatever damages the insurance company was willing to cover.
I was toweling off from a shower in the Walker’s guesthouse when my insurance broker, Vincent Moretti, returned my call. I’ve never met the guy face-to-face, but I’ve always envisioned him as Vito Corleone because that’s exactly who he sounds like over the phone. He’d reviewed my policy, he said, run some numbers, and scheduled a claims adjuster to tally up the damage. Assuming the Ruptured Duck was totaled, he said, which is what it sounded like to him, I was looking at about $20,000.
“That’s laughable, Vinnie, and you know it. My plane’s easily worth twice that much. I just got the engine overhauled.”
“You’re a serious pilot, Cordell, to be treated with respect,” Vinnie said, like his mouth was crammed with Sicilian olives, “but your aircraft is old. It’s tired. Trust me on this, my friend, when I say that I would be doing you a service, cashing you out at twenty large.”
“I owe more than twenty large on that plane, Vinnie. I’ve got two notes against it. I settle with you for $20,000, I’m done flying. That means no more annual premium checks from me to you. This is the first claim I’ve ever filed. Ever. You’re telling me that doesn’t count for something?”
Vinnie heaved a Godfather-size sigh and said he would see what he could do, like he was doing me a huge favor.
After I got dressed, I settled back on the bed and tried to relax. I thought about checking in with Detective Rosario to find out whether Bunny the Human Doberman had been picked up by the authorities in Arizona, but I figured Rosario would’ve called if she had any news. I yawned, suddenly realizing that I was tired, and closed my eyes to catch a short nap. When I awoke, four hours had come and gone. The guesthouse was dark. I walked outside.