Текст книги "Voodoo Ridge"

Автор книги: David Freed

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

TWO

You haven’t lived until you’ve walked in on your octogenarian landlady, a retired gym teacher from Brooklyn, as she grunts out squat thrusts while trying to keep up with some hunky Israeli physical fitness guru on her ancient, black and white console TV.

“Working the glutes,” Mrs. Schmulowitz panted, up and down, up and down. “Melting chicken fat like it’s going out of style.”

Her joints sounded like somebody stepping on broken glass.

“Careful you don’t hurt yourself, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

“Don’t you worry about me, bubby. I taught physical education for sixty-one years. And the first rule of physical education is, if your legs don’t feel like they’re falling off your body, you’re being a lazy schlep.”

With her lime green high-tops, raspberry leggings, tangerine leotard, and a blue New York Giants sweatband, she looked like an eighty-eight-pound Jell-O parfait; one topped with a thinning frizz of hair dyed the color of straw. She sprang off the floor like a woman a third her age, toweled the sweat from her brow, and patted my cheek.

“So, how was Los Angeles?” Then she caught sight of Savannah, walking in behind me. “And look who you brought back with you! Only the most beauteous gal in the whole world.”

“You’re looking as lovely as ever, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” Savannah said.

The two embraced before Mrs. Schmulowitz took a step back and gave her the once-over. Savannah was wearing flat-soled Roman sandals, leather straps snaking up her supple calves, and a pleated peasant skirt. Her perfumed, hennaed tresses cascaded over the shoulders of a simple sleeveless white cotton blouse.

“I’m gonna tell ya something,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “If I looked that crazy sexy when I was your age, I would’ve blown off the whole teaching gig and gone straight into porno. My only problem was, they hadn’t invented movies yet. People back in my day sat around the campfire, telling stories.”

“Right,” I said. “The campfire. In Brooklyn.”

“You’re not that old, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” Savannah smiled.

“Not that old? What, are you kiddin’ me? You know that key Ben Franklin stuck on the end of his kite? It was to my apartment on Bay Parkway.”

I tried not to laugh. It would’ve only encouraged her.

“Savannah and I are flying up to Lake Tahoe tomorrow,” I said. “We’re getting remarried.”

She was momentarily speechless and obviously delighted. It was the first time I’d ever seen Mrs. Schmulowitz at a loss for words.

“Mazel tov! May the both of you find as much joy as I did with my third husband. OK, granted, so the man could get a little kinky at times. You take the good with the bad, am I right?” Mrs. Schmulowitz pecked us both on the cheek, then gave me an affectionate, coach-like slap on the butt. “Way to go, bubby. Smart move. She’s a keeper.”

I politely declined her offer to cook us a celebratory dinner. My plan was to take Savannah out that night, somewhere romantic.

“Then at least let me watch your cat for you while you’re away,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, “unless, of course, you want him in the wedding. I can see it now, that meshuggener kitty coming down the aisle, the ring tied around his neck. A kitty ring bearer. You could get on the Internet. You could get on Letterman!”

As if on cue, my cat, Kiddiot – so named because no feline in history was ever more intellectually challenged – came strolling in from Mrs. Schmulowitz’s kitchen looking like an orange balloon mounted on short, skinny legs, with a pipe-cleaner tail that stuck straight up. He made little chirping sounds, like he was happy to see us. He even allowed Savannah to scratch his ears for a few seconds before glancing over at me with a look that I interpreted as disgust, flicked his tail, and strolled nonchalantly back into the kitchen.

“He’s decided he enjoys chopped liver,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “The secret Schmulowitz family recipe. He prefers it on rye bread.”

“Toasted?”

“Of course, toasted. How else is anyone supposed to eat chopped liver?”

In the next life, I most definitely want to come back as my cat.

* * *

A resort community as affluent as Rancho Bonita isn’t hurting for fine dining. California Street, the main drag, which ambles up from the beach for a tree-canopied mile before doglegging inland, boasts dozens of restaurants where dinner and drinks can run more than a monthly car payment on a new Mercedes. They’re not the kind of eateries that locals like me typically frequent: Mexican greasy spoons that serve up six-dollar smothered chile verde burritos fat as bricks, the kind that camp out in your gut like squatters, leaving you convinced you’ll never eat again.

Mrs. Schmulowitz suggested that I take Savannah to Bel Cibo, an intimate, white-tablecloth Italian joint overlooking the water. I was certain Bel Cibo translated to, “Big Ambiance, Small Portions,” but that was cool. For once, money was no object, even if I didn’t have any. It’s not every day a man asks the world’s most beautiful woman to marry him again and she says yes.

The menu was in Italian. Not that I could’ve read it anyway, not in the dim candlelight of our corner table. I was getting to that stage in life where I needed reading glasses. I hated it. Our tuxedoed waiter, an anxious little man with a dented nose and dark, slicked back hair, sounded like a guy from New Jersey trying to sound like a guy from Naples.

“For the belladona?”

Savannah held a candle close as she perused the menu. She’d put her hair up – glamour incarnate in gold hoops, heels, and a short, off-the-shoulder cocktail dress, black. I’d trimmed my jail break of a beard and changed into my only dress shirt and khakis. I would’ve ironed both had I owned an iron.

“I’d like to start with the Mozzarella di Bufala con Pomodoro e Basilico, please,” she told the waiter, “then the Tagliolini del Campo as an entree.”

“Eccellente. And for the signore?”

“What do you recommend?”

He recommended the Tortino di Granceaola as an appetizer, followed by Rustichella d’Abruzzo all’Amatriciana. Whatever the hell those were. Both, he assured me, were “molto delizioso.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

The waiter asked if we’d had a chance to look over the wine list.

“We won’t be having wine tonight,” I said.

“That’s right, we won’t.” Savannah beamed. “I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulazioni.”

He suggested a bottle of sparkling water. Savannah said that would be fine.

“You have no idea what you just ordered, do you?” she said playfully after the waiter departed.

“Not a clue. Doesn’t matter, though. All I want is you.”

She tilted her head, stroking the side of her neck, and smiled demurely. The candlelight danced in her eyes.

“The romantic Cordell Logan. It’s so unlike you.”

I was on a roll. “You’re unbelievably beautiful tonight, Savannah. More so than usual. As if that’s even possible. I’m so lucky.”

“I’m the one who’s lucky.”

We held hands across the table. I felt warm and good inside, that sensation when you’re living in the moment, where you belong.

Across the restaurant, a busboy spilled a tray of water glasses that shattered on the travertine floor, loud as firecrackers. Every other diner flinched, startled, including Savannah. I didn’t. She noticed.

“What is it with you?”

I looked over at her.

“Somebody drops a bunch of glasses and everybody jumps out of their skin but you. Arlo was the same way. Why can’t you just be honest with me, Logan?”

“About what?”

“You know what. About you. What you did for a living when we were married. The real story.”

She knew only part of the story, the one before we’d met. That I’d graduated a rare liberal arts major from the Air Force Academy, and that I’d flown combat missions over Iraq in A-10 Warthogs before an old football injury disqualified me from flight status. What she didn’t know was that I’d spent nearly a decade after that off the books, much of it while we were husband and wife, kicking in doors as part of a tier one, inter-service counterterrorism unit, code-named Alpha. I could’ve told her that a man doesn’t spend as long as I did shooting people and getting shot at without learning to control his acoustic startle reflex. I also could’ve told her that Arlo Echevarria had been my boss at Alpha, and that my cover story – working with him at a marketing agency in San Francisco where we all lived at the time – was straight-up hokum. But I kept my mouth shut.

Savannah suspected that the marketing job was a cover story, especially after Echevarria, who’d retired by then, was shot to death in Los Angeles. Now here we were, less than a year after his murder, planning a new life together amid her same old demands of candor and transparency, and my same old obfuscation of the truth. The more things change…

“You mind me asking you a question?”

“We’re getting married again, Logan. You can ask me anything.”

“How many men did you sleep with before we met?”

She sat back in her chair. “What I did before we met is none of your concern.”

“I rest my case.”

She stared at me with her eyebrows raised and mouth open – that same expression every woman wears when she realizes that the man she’s dining with possesses all the smarts of a doorknob.

“Logan, what you did before we were married is absolutely none of my business. And what I did is none of yours. What you did for a living while we were married, though, was and is very much my business.”

“I’ve told you what I did a hundred times. But for clarification, let’s go with a hundred and one: I was a marketing sales rep.”

She rewarded my lie with a disbelieving smirk. “A sales rep. With a gun.”

“Plenty of people own guns, including sales reps. This is America, Savannah. Mom, apple pie, and guns.”

Our special evening together teetered on the precipice. Sparkling water could not have arrived at a more opportune moment. The waiter filled our glasses while the restaurant’s sommelier delivered a bottle of wine to an older couple at the next table. He opened the bottle with a flourish and presented the cork to the gentleman for his inspection. Then he dribbled some of the wine into a small silver chalice that dangled from a chain around his neck. He sipped, smacked his lips, pronounced the selection, “Squisito,” poured the vino into long-stemmed crystal goblets, wrapped the bottle in a linen towel like he was changing a diaper, set the bottle on the table, bowed crisply from the waist, and left.

“The guy gets paid to chug other people’s overpriced grape juice?” I said. “I’m definitely in the wrong line of work.”

Savannah exhaled through her nose and looked away. Call it a hunch, but I got the impression she was still mad at me.

* * *

Buddhists bathe their statues of the Buddha. The practice is supposed to improve harmony and inner balance. I owned no such statue but, thanks to Mrs. Schmulowitz, I did have a tub in my garage apartment. And if anybody’s harmony and inner balance needed improvement, especially after the tenuous way dinner with Savannah had gone that night, it was mine.

“Think I’ll go take a bath.”

“Whatever you’d like,” she said indifferently. She was stretched out on my bed reading Psychology Today, still wearing her cocktail dress, heels off. Kiddiot dozed on her toes like a fluffy, purring foot warmer.

The tub was purple. Ditto the sink and toilet. Mrs. Schmulowitz had picked them all up for a song at the garage sale of some aging rock star who’d decided to redo his McMansion after laboring one season on one of those celebrity rehab shows. Rancho Bonita was crawling with folks like that, famous people who had more money than sense. I shut the bathroom door and ran the water as hot as it would go. I also squirted in a liberal dose of Mr. Bubble, because nothing says “relaxation” like foamy suds, and also because Mr. Bubble is odorless. When you’ve pulled triggers for a living, there’s something antithetical about going around all day smelling like strawberry or golden-toasted coconut.

I stripped naked and eased into the tub, soaking a forest green washcloth, then spreading it flat across my face as I lay back with my eyes closed. It’s in the quiet of such moments that memories intrude. The price, I suppose, for having a clan-destine past.

The wet heat conjured memories of a mission to Indonesia, where a certain radical Muslim cleric affiliated with the Malay Archipelago chapter of a certain international terrorist network had proudly claimed credit for helping design especially lethal antipersonnel land mines used against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rat poison sprinkled among the steel ball bearings dispersed when the mine exploded. Acting as an anticoagulant, the poison prevented blood from clotting, thus reducing a wounded warrior’s chances of survival.

The cleric needed to be put out of action.

Following a typhoon and posing as relief workers, five Alpha go-to guys, including me, were dispatched to Jakarta by way of Tokyo and Singapore. The cleric wasn’t hard to find. He broadcast a jihadist religious radio show from his mosque twice daily, seven days a week because Allah doesn’t believe that Muslims need a day of rest. We waited until he was off air, entered the mosque, ventilated his bodyguard, then him. His last words were, “I am going to paradise,” to which one of my colleagues responded, “Happy trails,” then put a .40-caliber slug in the bastard’s forehead.

I must’ve nodded off because the next thing I knew, Savannah was in the tub with me.

“Mr. Bubble?” she said, nodding toward the bottle. “Really, Logan? You?”

“It leaves my skin feeling silky smooth.”

She smiled, soaped up the washcloth and began gently scrubbing my chest.

“You’re totally naked,” I said.

“Thanks for noticing.”

I smiled. All those nights I lay awake after our divorce, wishing I could see her one more time, just this way. And now, here we were.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said.

“Always a dangerous proposition.”

“We should just leave past issues in the past. I won’t ask you again what you did, your real job.”

I watched a bead of water course the length of her throat and down, seductively, between her breasts.

“You mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“That would be two personal questions tonight, Logan.” She leaned closer to me, her hands cupped with warm water, and slowly rinsed the lather from my neck. “I’m not sure we really know each other that well.”

“Ever gotten busy in a purple tub?”

She pretended to think about it for a while. “Can’t say that I have. You?”

“Never.”

Her lips curled mischievously. “Well, you know what they say? There’s a first time for everything.” Then she leaned in closer and softly kissed my closed eyes.

Beneath the suds, something brushed against my leg and glided northward, to more sensitive anatomical turf.

I knew it wasn’t the soap.

* * *

Sleep should’ve come easily that night. Savannah was snuggled close, her back to my chest, dreaming contentedly in my arms. The rest of our lives lay ahead of us like a golden fairy tale. But I was awake, consumed by introspection and a rare dose of pure self-realization. If the two of us were to make marriage stick this time, I needed to change, shed myself, I realized, of those vestiges that defined who I’d been and what I’d done all those years in the service of my country. As slowly and quietly as I could, I got out of bed, reached between the mattress and box spring, and unlimbered my two-inch, 357 Colt Python revolver.

“Where’re you going?” Savannah asked groggily.

“Gotta run a quick errand. Go back to sleep.”

“Promise you’ll come back?”

I bent down and kissed her shoulders. “Promise you’ll be here if I do?”

She smiled.

“Promise.”

Kiddiot was curled like a ball on the floor near the bed, his face buried in his tail. He didn’t stir as I dressed and left. My watch showed 0335 hours.

Save for a street-sweeping truck washing down the vomit and spilled beer outside the bars and dance clubs on lower California Street that had closed more than an hour earlier, downtown Rancho Bonita was quiet. Not another car in sight, all the way to the beach.

I parked my truck along Magellan Boulevard, got out, and walked across the sand. The tide was out. The moon was gone. The gun was tucked in the small of my back. It had been my primary backup weapon when I served with Alpha – the theory being that a revolver is less prone to misfire than a more mechanically complex semiauto and, thus, more reliable in a pinch. More than once, the little snub nose had saved my life. But that life was behind me now.

I threw it as far into the ocean as I could. Then I drove home.

* * *

Heavy and hirsute, Larry Kropf trudged out of his hangar at the Rancho Bonita Airport and onto the flight line, grimacing on two bad knees and wiping his greasy hands on a greasy rag.

“Where’re you headed, Logan?”

“Lake Tahoe,” I said, loading the last of the luggage into the back of the Ruptured Duck. “We’re getting remarried.”

Larry peered at Savannah over the bulletproof-thick lenses of his Buddy Holly glasses, then at me, as if I’d just notified him that we were planning a bank robbery. He was wearing a frayed white T-shirt and bib overalls for a change instead of his usual blue work pants. Pulled down low across his brow was a beat-to-hell, red and white baseball cap that read, “You can’t scare me. I have a teenage daughter.”

“Remarried?” Larry asked. “Nobody in their right mind marries the same woman twice, Logan. Why repeat the same mistake?”

“Uh, hello.” Savannah folded her arms indignantly. “I’m right here, Larry.”

“Savannah, you remember my mechanic, Larry?”

“Not just your mechanic,” Larry said. “The guy you rent hangar space from for your wildly successful international flight school.”

“Larry’s being somewhat sarcastic,” I said.

“I would’ve never guessed,” Savannah said facetiously.

He might’ve fancied himself a badass, but Larry was, in truth, a big softie who’d give you the proverbial size XXXL shirt off his furry back if you needed it. He knew that my “wildly successful” flight school was on the brink of insolvency, and that I owed him about $30,000 in repairs to the Ruptured Duck, as well as back rent. He also knew that I had no way to repay him in full given my financial straits, which was why he’d stopped hounding me. Every so often, though, he couldn’t help but get a dig in. Call it catharsis. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

“Well,” Larry said, “I hope you at least got enough cash to pay for the marriage license.”

I locked the Duck’s cargo door and resisted the urge to check my wallet.

“How much does he owe you?” Savannah said.

“Twenty-nine large and change.” Larry took off his glasses and wiped them on his T-shirt. “But who’s counting anymore, right?”

“How ’bout thirty grand and we call it even?” Savannah asked, digging through her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag. “What would you say to that?”

Larry looked at her like he wasn’t sure she was serious. “I’d say, ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ ” he said.

My ex-wife got out a pen and her checkbook.

A real man is supposed to make his own way in the world, relying on no one but himself. A real man’s code of honor prohibits him from taking anything except that which he deserves. He doesn’t stand idly by, watching his wealthy former spouse casually cover his five-figure IOU like she was buying a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies. But all I could muster was a meek, “You really don’t have to do that, Savannah.”

“You’re right. I don’t have to, Logan. I want to. We’re a team now. And, besides, Larry needs the money, right?”

“Putting it mildly,” Larry said.

Savannah filled out the check, then handed it to him. He stared at it like it was manna from heaven and muttered something about how he’d never say another unkind word about me as long as he lived.

I told Savannah I could never possibly repay her generosity.

“Take me to Tahoe, flyboy,” is all she said.

THREE

Pilots joke that a smooth landing is mostly luck, that greasing an airplane onto the runway twice in a row is all luck, and that three in a row is prevarication. Many aviators consider their ability to return a flying machine safely to the ground in reusable condition the ultimate measure of skill. Not me. For me, it’s all about passenger comfort. Looking over at Savannah napping peacefully in the right seat, snuggled under my leather flight jacket, her head propped against the door, I had every reason at that moment to consider myself among the greatest pilots who ever lived.

For any good airman, regardless of how relaxing he may claim it is, flying is rarely without worry. You worry about the ever unpredictable variability of weather. The fear of midair collision with another airplane ranks right up there. Little, however, contributes more to a pilot’s pucker factor than the potential of some catastrophic mechanical failure occurring miles above the earth, especially in an aging, single-engine bird like the Ruptured Duck. Ordinarily, I would’ve been constantly scrutinizing the gauges, fretting about the occasional creak or groan that all airplanes make—“Indian night noises,” the leather-helmeted old timers used to call them – all the while scanning the ground for suitable emergency landing sites in the event of “what-if?”

But not on that day. On that day, flying Savannah up to Lake Tahoe and what would be the beginning of Our Life Together, Chapter 2, my aging four-seat Cessna performed flawlessly. Invigorated by the cold at 10,500 feet, the Duck carried us through California’s Central Valley on air so silken that I flew virtually hands free, needing only to adjust the elevator trim every few minutes to maintain altitude.

Off our right wingtip, the sawtooth mountaintops of the Sierra Nevada beckoned as though dipped in powdered sugar. I was tempted to wake Savannah, to share the postcard view, but she looked so peaceful that I thought the better of it. She was, after all, sleeping for two. There’d be plenty of opportunities for sightseeing when we were a family. From perpetual foster child to the head of my own real clan. It had taken only more than four decades. I smiled inside.

A family. So this is what serenity must feel like.

After more than two hours in the air, I hooked a right northeast of Sacramento, then followed the highway that wended up from the little Gold Rush-era burg of Placerville, to the airport at South Lake Tahoe. That way, even if visibility deteriorated, which it showed no indication of doing, I could reasonably minimize the chances of becoming personally acquainted with any of the area’s 10,000-foot peaks. The Sierra was a veritable graveyard of airplanes whose pilots disrespected Mama Nature and paid the price. The Duck and I didn’t intend to join them.

We were twelve minutes from landing, according to the Garmin GPS mounted on my steering yoke. Oakland Center had just instructed me to squawk VFR and change to the advisory frequency for traffic pattern entry at South Lake Tahoe, when something on the ground a mile or so ahead of us and slightly to the north glinted brightly, almost blindingly. It looked to me like a signaling mirror, like somebody trying to get our attention. Whatever it was seemed to be coming from deep in the pines between two jagged, granite crests.

“Where are we?” Savannah said, stretching her arms and yawning.

“About ten miles out of Tahoe. Nice nap?”

“Wonderful nap. Very restful. What are you looking at?”

“I’m not exactly sure.”

I banked left to get a better look, hugging mountainsides as close as prudence would allow.

Had we taken off from Rancho Bonita one minute earlier that morning, or a minute later, the angle of the sun would’ve been lower or higher, and I might not have seen what I saw. I wouldn’t have seen it had there been more clouds, as the weather gurus initially predicted, or had I been focused on my prelanding checklist, as I probably should’ve been. The Buddha believes that what happens in life happens for a reason. I still don’t know the reason I saw what I saw that morning. But looking down through the pines as I flew over them, I glimpsed a large piece of polished aluminum protruding from the snow.

It looked like the twisted, skeletal remains of an airplane wing.

* * *

“South Lake Tahoe area traffic, Cessna Four Charlie Lima is five miles southwest of the field, descending through 8,000 feet. Crosswind entry, runway One-Eight, full-stop, South Lake Tahoe.”

I radioed our intentions and instinctively leaned forward in my seat, scanning the sky. If there were any other aircraft landing or departing the field, I couldn’t see them. The radio was silent. A good sign.

We turned base at pattern altitude. The view of Lake Tahoe off the Duck’s passenger side was spectacular. Whitecaps danced on water the color of gunmetal. Savannah gazed serenely out the window, smiling to herself. That was always one thing I loved about her, her willingness to let beautiful moments speak for themselves, rather than diluting them with the obvious, “Isn’t that beautiful?”

“South Lake Tahoe area traffic, Cessna Four Charlie Lima is turning final,” I radioed, “runway One-Eight, South Lake Tahoe.”

The Duck sniffed out the runway and settled onto the asphalt as gentle as a sigh. One of our better landings, if I do say so myself.

“You should think about being a pilot,” Savannah said, teasing me. “You’re not half bad at it.”

“Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll definitely give it some thought.”

I broadcast that we were “down and clear” of the runway, and taxied toward an arrow and a sign that said, “Transient parking.” A tall, gangly ramp attendant in his mid-twenties, wearing faded Levis and a florescent green safety vest over a hooded San Francisco 49ers sweatshirt, directed us to a tie-down spot in front of Summit Aviation Services, the local fixed-base operator. After I’d shut down the engine, he set the wheel chocks and began chaining down the Duck’s wings to the tarmac, then held Savannah’s door open for her.

“I’m Chad. Welcome to Tahoe,” he said, brushing his long, unkempt dirty blond hair out of his face. He had sallow eyes, ice blue. “Where’re you guys in from?”

I wanted to ask him at what point did people begin referring to both men and women synonymously as “guys?” But I didn’t.

“Rancho Bonita,” I said, “by way of Los Angeles.”

“Sweet. My girlfriend lives down in Rancho Bonita – actually, my former girlfriend. We still talk pretty much every day, though. One of those deals where we tell each other pretty much everything. No holding back. Maybe that’s why we broke up. Who knows, right?”

“Something to strive toward in any relationship, that degree of openness and emotional intimacy,” Savannah said, looking directly at me with one eyebrow raised. “Wouldn’t you agree, Logan?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“Maybe you know her,” Chad said opening the Duck’s baggage door and taking out our luggage. “Her name’s Cherry Rosales. She works at Nordstrom, the store downtown. Sells jewelry.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m more of a Sears kind of guy.”

The air was cold enough that we could see our breath. Chad asked how long we planned to stay and whether we needed any recommendations on accommodations in the Tahoe area. Savannah gave him the name of the local bed-and-breakfast where she’d made reservations.

“As for how long we’re staying,” she said, “that all depends on how well my pilot and I are getting along.”

“We’re getting married,” I said, clarifying matters.

“Seriously?” Chad’s expression implied that people our age were as likely to croak from some incurable disease as they were to get hitched.

“Yeah. Seriously.”

“Hey, that’s totally cool. Congratulations.”

Savannah said we’d need a rental car, to which Chad replied, “No problem.” I said that the Duck’s gas tanks would need to be topped off to which he offered the same response.

“Got your complimentary hot coffee inside, sodas, cookies, peanut butter pretzels, what have you. Feel free to help yourself. Marlene’ll hook you up with all the paperwork for the car and your fuel order. I’ll bring your bags in. Anything else I can do for you folks today?”

“You can call the local search and rescue team for me. I saw something when we were flying in. West, about 10 miles out, up in the hills. It looked like a downed airplane.”

“You’re shittin’ me. A downed airplane? Really?” Chad promptly apologized to Savannah for swearing and said he was trying to break the profanity habit.

No big deal, Savannah said. She’d heard worse.

“I haven’t heard of any planes missing for a while,” Chad said, “either coming in or going out of here, but, hey, you never know, right?”

“Could be it’s been up there for some time and nobody noticed,” I said.

The kid nodded, then snapped his fingers like he’d just thought of something.

“Hey, what if it’s Amelia Earhart?”

“Hey,” I said, tipping him a five-spot, “what if it’s not?”

* * *

The aforementioned Marlene, Summit Aviation Services’ zaftig, forty-something receptionist, made Chad seem downright rude by comparison. She waived the overnight parking fee for the Duck because we were buying gas, and upgraded our rental car from a compact to a GMC Yukon at no additional cost. Then she brewed a fresh pot of coffee and insisted on serving us oatmeal cookies more freshly baked than the ones that had been sitting on her desk.

“And did I mention we have complimentary bicycles for your enjoyment? – though it’s probably not the best time of the year to go for a bike ride. Been pretty darned nippy around here.”

She leaned over the coffeemaker and poured us Styrofoam cups of hot joe.

The steam fogged the lenses of Marlene’s red-frame bifocals and made her brunette shag even shaggier. Her face was soft and full. I noticed faint dark rings obscured by makeup under both eyes. Natural shading, or the result of being punched? I couldn’t tell.

“So nice of you,” Savannah said. “Thank you.”

“Just trying to keep the customer satisfied.” Marlene smiled. “I believe that was a lyric in an old Simon and Garfunkel song, was it not?”

“I believe it was,” Savannah said.

My ex-wife caught my eye and winked subtly. She knew that I keenly distrusted overtly friendly people until such time as they’d shown their true colors – people like genuinely nice Mrs. Schmulowitz. Geniality, I’ve learned the hard way, often belies the blackest of instincts, hard-wired impulses that cruise sharklike behind cordial smiles, ready to surface at little provocation. I’ve known remorseless murderers who would’ve been perceived as “nice” by any definition when they were not out slaughtering innocents. I’ve personally removed a few of those “nice” people from the planet. But that was before I was introduced to the Buddha who is all about giving strangers the benefit of the doubt, including seemingly well-meaning receptionists.