Текст книги "Fangs Out"

Автор книги: David Freed

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“I can’t make a living square dancing, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

“Well, you’re not doing too good with the flying from everything I can see.”

She had a point.

I told her I hoped to be home in a couple of days, just as soon as I could figure out what to do with my airplane, or what was left of it. Mrs. Schmulowitz promised to save me some of the brisket she’d cooked for Kiddiot.

“Did he come back?”

“Not yet, bubby. But I’m sure he will soon.”

A melancholy settled over me. My airplane was a wreck and my Kiddiot was still gone. He may have been the world’s most intellectually challenged cat, but he was still my intellectually challenged cat. The thought of life without him and the Duck left me feeling hollow inside.

“I’m getting my tummy tuck tomorrow,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “I’ll keep looking until then. He’s around here somewhere. I’ll leave some brisket out for him.”

I wished her a speedy recovery and made a mental note to buy her white daisies, her favorite, when I got home.

* * *

Crissy Walker met me at her front door with a warm embrace. Hub squeezed my shoulder and said he was relieved I was still alive.

“It’s a miracle you survived, from what I saw on the TV,” Hub said. “You must have some damn powerful angels looking out for you, son.”

In Buddhism, angels are known as devas. The only thing I knew about them is that they rarely intervene in human affairs. So maybe it was other angels who’d come to my rescue, like the workers at Cessna who, forty years earlier, had built into the Ruptured Duck’s cabin the structural integrity to withstand an event like the crash I’d just lived through without so much as a hangnail. Whoever or whatever was responsible for my good fortune, I was alive. And that was good enough for me.

The Walkers stepped aside and there was Savannah. She approached me with open arms, like she was going to enfold me, happy that I’d returned in one piece – then socked me in the stomach.

“What was that for?”

“Scaring me half to death.”

Once upon a time I would’ve seen a punch like that coming, slipped it easily and, had it not been my ex-wife, snapped the arm of whoever had thrown it.

You’re getting old, Logan. That or civilized.

“I crash an airplane and you punch me?”

“You couldn’t take two minutes and call me? I have to watch the TV news to find out you were nearly killed, and you can’t understand why I’m upset? Jesus, Logan. Can’t you think of anyone else besides yourself for once in your life?”

“I’m sorry, Savannah, I was a little busy.”

“Busy. Right. Being self-absorbed. You have no consideration for anybody else. It’s like the empathetic components of your thought processes are one step removed from a Neanderthal.”

“So a Neanderthal deserves to be socked in the stomach? Think about that, Savannah. If I’d have punched you, the cops would be on their way over here right now.”

“If you had punched me, Logan, we’d be done.”

“I’m starting to wonder if we already are.”

She turned in a huff and disappeared into the house.

Hub and Crissy watched her go.

“That’s how they all are,” Walker said. “Every one of ’em. Wired up funny as hell.”

Crissy slugged him in the shoulder, feigning insult. He grinned and drew her close.

“Savannah was just scared, that’s all,” Crissy said. “We all were, quite frankly. I know she’s relieved you’re OK.”

“She sure has an interesting way of showing it.”

Across the street, Major Kilgore sat in a white wicker chair on his front porch, cleaning what looked like an M14 rifle.

* * *

I spent that night parked in the driveway in my rented Escalade. Savannah refused to talk to me and had gone to bed early. The Walkers, sympathetic to my plight, graciously offered me the use of their living room sofa, but I declined. I needed my own space to think things through.

Savannah, I realized, was a compulsion, if not an addiction. If I were to recover from that addiction, I would need to fall back on the same kind of twelve-step strategy embraced by alcoholics and gamblers. The first step of any recovery program is to admit that you can’t master your addiction alone. It requires a higher power. This is where I ran into trouble. Buddha to my knowledge never addressed the issue of former spouses that you just can’t let go of. I was also fairly certain that no support groups existed in the Rancho Bonita area specifically intended to benefit men with a problem like mine. “I Miss My Ex Anonymous”? Seriously, what guy would attend that kind of whine fest?

If I were at all honest with myself, however, the truth was that, painful as it was at times, I didn’t want to escape my Savannah addiction. And, at the same time, I wanted her out of my life as much as I ever wanted to be rid of anything. Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted when it came to her. I tried to focus on my missing cat. I tried to think about my broken airplane. Both made me feel worse.

My phone rang. I was hoping it was Savannah, but it wasn’t. It was Eric LaDucrie, the baseball star-turned-death-penalty proponent Hub Walker had wanted me to meet with. He said he was due back in San Diego the next day. We made arrangements to meet at his condo on Coronado at two P.M. He seemed eager to talk.

I drifted off to sleep somewhere after midnight. Two hours later, I was awakened by the sound of chewing.

Raccoons had invaded Hub Walker’s trash cans. Five of the critters were enjoying a late night feast of chicken bones and what looked to be leftover fettuccini Alfredo. I rolled down my window and yelled at the thieves in their cute little Zorro masks to scram. One of them paused, raised up on his haunches, and looked over at me as if to say, “Yeah? What’re you gonna do about it, pal?” then continued chowing down with his buddies like I wasn’t there. I rolled the window back up, reclined the driver’s seat, and tried to go back to sleep.

Live long enough, you learn to pick your battles.

Ten

The sun was up. Savannah had locked herself in the Walkers’ guesthouse bathroom. From the other side of the door, I could hear water running in the sink.

“How about we go to SeaWorld today,” I said, “pet some penguins?”

No response.

“You’re being unreasonable, Savannah.”

“I’m being unreasonable?” she said from the other side of the door.

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare the hell out of you. Next time I crash, I’ll definitely call you immediately afterward, OK?”

The door flung open. Savannah was wrapped in a towel.

“How can you possibly have the audacity to call me ‘unreasonable’? Do you know how many nights, how many years, I cried myself to sleep, wondering where you were, wondering if you were alive or dead, knowing you were lying through your teeth whenever I asked you what you did for a living – what you really did – and all you’d tell me was, ‘Marketing’? Yesterday brought it all back, Logan. The fear. The constant, terrible stress. I’m just not sure I can go through it all over again. Can you at least begin to understand that?”

She caught me staring at her legs.

“I’m trying to have an adult conversation with you. Can you please get your mind out of the gutter for once?”

“My mind is not in the gutter, Savannah. It’s in the shower. I need to take one – unless you want to take one together. Conserve precious natural resources. Save the planet. All that happy stuff.”

She rolled her eyes, tears streaming. Then she slammed the door, locking it once more.

Call me a dope. I’d probably deserve it.

“Guess I’ll take a shower later,” I said to the door.

Silence.

My phone rang as I walked outside to cool off. The caller identified himself as Paul Horvath from the Federal Aviation Administration’s local Flight Standards District Office. He’d been assigned, he said, to investigate the “incident” in which I’d been involved the previous day at Montgomery Airport. His voice was nasally, like his nose had been clipped by a clothespin.

“My preliminary examination of your aircraft found something quite interesting,” Horvath said. “How soon can we meet?”

“As soon as I can hire an attorney willing to represent me.”

Most pilots have a keen distrust of the FAA. For better or worse, the agency’s accident investigators are perceived as headhunters eager to ground any flyer for the slightest transgression. A meteor could sheer off your wings, terrorists could blast you out of the sky over Kansas with shoulder-fired missiles, and the FAA would still find some way to blame you for the crash.

“You’re entitled to legal counsel, Mr. Logan,” Horvath said, “but I should tell you, again preliminarily, that the causative factors leading to the catastrophic failure of your engine yesterday would appear to have been largely beyond your control.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I’d prefer to show you what I found, rather than discuss it over the telephone.”

He didn’t sound like an evil government bureaucrat. He sounded like a government bureaucrat with an adenoid condition. I agreed to meet him an hour later outside the airport’s terminal building.

Savannah was still locked in the bathroom. I told her I’d be back that afternoon, which would still leave us plenty of time if she wanted to go to SeaWorld.

“I’ll think about it,” she said through the door.

At least she was still talking to me.

* * *

Crissy Walker left a note for me on the kitchen counter: Hub was spending the morning with Ryder at zoo camp, and later attending a lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art. Would Savannah and I like to join them for lunch after they got home? I couldn’t speak for Savannah, I wrote on the backside of the same note, but I was headed to the airport to meet with the FAA and to not expect me until afternoon. I added, “Thanks anyway.” I would’ve included one of those little smiley faces, only I don’t do smiley faces.

The mess the raccoons had left beside my Escalade was still there. The Walkers must’ve missed it when they pulled out. I cleaned it up as best I could while Major Kilgore trimmed his hedges across the street with electric clippers, pausing periodically to check his work with a carpenter’s level. Backing out of the driveway, I gave him a thumbs-up, but he appeared not to appreciate the gesture. I could see him in my rearview as I drove away, getting smaller and smaller, glaring after me.

I called my insurance broker, Vincent Moretti, on the way to the airport and left a message, letting him know he’d be receiving a claim on my policy. A big claim. In all my years of flying, even in combat, I’d never once dinged an airplane. And of all the planes I’d ever flown, none was more reliable than the Ruptured Duck. I hoped to get him back in the air, but given his age and the damage done, I had my doubts that my old airplane was even salvageable.

Paul Horvath was waiting for me in the parking lot outside the terminal building at Montgomery Field, a professorial, gray-haired man in his late fifties with bifocals and a wispy, Wolf Blitzer-style beard. A laminated FAA photo ID card hung from a lanyard around his neck. He wore a peach-colored, short-sleeve dress shirt, pleated khakis, and black, soft-soled oxfords. His left eye twitched with a pronounced tic.

“Your aircraft’s been relocated to an enclosed hangar for closer inspection,” he said, shaking my hand. “We can take my car.”

“Lead on.”

We climbed into a white government sedan, unmarked but for its FAA license plates. Horvath drove fifty feet to a chain link gate, swiping his ID card on the computerized badge reader and punching in a security code. The gate lurched open, beeping. After we drove onto the tarmac, he waited until the gate automatically slid closed behind us, then continued on toward a line of corrugated aluminum hangars that fronted the runway, not far from where the Duck and I had gone down.

“Your plane’s in there,” Horvath said, pointing to the westernmost hangar. “What’s left of it.”

I’d sat through more than a few postmortem examinations when I was with Alpha. You get used to them after awhile, even the stench, when you realize that the body on the autopsy table is there because you’d helped put it there, and because the individual it once belonged to posed a threat to national security. Dispassion comes easy when you watch a genuine bad guy being sliced and diced. But the Ruptured Duck was no bad guy. Inanimate object or otherwise, he was one of my best friends, who’d gotten me out of more scrapes than I cared to remember. Having to observe a clinical assessment of his remains by some federal paper-pusher like Horvath was hardly something I was looking forward to. Neither of us said another word as Horvath drove toward the hangar and stopped in front of it.

A padlock secured a side door. The FAA man dialed in the combination, then stepped inside to undo a couple of hinged bolts holding down the hangar’s bifold door. He pushed a button, engaging an overhead motor, and the big door slowly began to lift, like a metal curtain on a stage.

There sat the Duck, scraped and streaked with oil, his right wing crumpled, tail assembly smashed, miscellaneous pieces strewn about the hangar floor. They’d turned him right side up, back on his landing gear, but it only made my dead plane look even deader. Something caught in my throat and I could feel my eyes getting moist.

“I’ve seen far worse,” Horvath said, resting a hand on my shoulder.

“Me, too. At the glue factory.”

“This is what I thought you might want to see.” He strode toward the engine compartment. The cowling cover had been removed. “Your engine breather line was plugged,” Horvath said, holding up a short length of black rubber hose. “You applied full throttle, as you normally would at takeoff. But with the line plugged, pressure inside the engine built up, the crankcase seal blew, and there went all your oil. No oil, no engine. Simple as that.”

“You’re implying that I should’ve checked the breather line during my preflight inspection. Which means I’m at fault.”

Horvath smiled reassuringly. “No pilot would be expected to check his breather line on a preflight inspection, Mr. Logan. It’s too deep inside the engine compartment to get at readily. Besides, you’d have to open up the tube itself to check for obstructions. The only person who’s going to do that is your mechanic when the plane goes in for its annual inspection.”

“So, you’re saying it wasn’t my fault?”

“That would be my supposition at this point.”

I exhaled. “Then what caused the obstruction? That engine was overhauled a month ago. I’ve logged fifty hours since then without so much as a hiccup.”

Horvath’s eye twitched. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a plastic baggie. Inside was a small wad of duct tape.

“I found this inside the line,” he said, stuffing the oily gray wad into one end of the hose to show me how snugly it fit. “Whoever put it in there must’ve done it intentionally.”

“You’re telling me that somebody tried to sabotage my plane?”

“Not tried, Mr. Logan, did. That’s off the record, of course. We’re not allowed to discuss any findings until our investigation is completed. But I did think you’d want to know at least preliminarily.”

My eye began to twitch like Horvath’s, and I don’t have any tics. It was one thing to come after me by trying to bring down my airplane. It was quite another to do so without regard for the safety of my passengers, or for innocent people on the ground who also could’ve died. A rage burned through me like magma.

“Any idea who might’ve wanted to do something like this?” Horvath asked.

“I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”

You don’t spend as many years as I did hunting rabid humans without rankling more than a few bent on payback. No names or faces, however, came readily to mind. Was there a link between that wad of duct tape jammed inside my engine and the execution of Dorian Munz? Had somebody tried to kill me because I’d somehow stuck my nose where it didn’t belong in the employ of Hub Walker? My gut told me as much. There were a couple of things I knew with certainty at that moment, staring at the pathetic wreck of my airplane. One was that I intended to find whoever was responsible. The other was that I intended to hurt them. Granted, not a very Zen-like sentiment, but had the Buddha ever flown a plane like the Ruptured Duck, I’m sure he would’ve understood.

Horvath noticed my right hand. I had unconsciously balled my fingers into a fist.

“Looks to me,” he said, “like somebody’s spoiling for a dogfight.”

There’s an expression among fighter jocks that described what I was feeling, the adrenaline-fueled determination to close with the enemy and destroy him. They call it, “Fangs out.”

“You’re aware, Mr. Logan,” Horvath cautioned, “that this may well be a matter for law enforcement.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Horvath.”

He nodded as if he understood the vengeful thoughts bouncing around inside my head, then turned away to survey the Ruptured Duck. I could see he was anxious to get back to his postmortem. I didn’t much feel like watching, and started to go. Horvath offered me a lift back to the parking lot, but I declined. The stroll would help calm me.

“You can’t just walk around an airport you’re not based at without an escort or proper credentials,” Horvath said. “There are security considerations, Mr. Logan. You’re a certified flight instructor. You should know that.”

“What’s the worst thing the FAA could do, ground me? I’m already grounded.”

He didn’t try stopping me.

* * *

I called Savannah as I walked back to the terminal building. There was no answer. I hung up without leaving a message. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to her, anyway, not in the mood I was in. Then my mechanic, Larry, called from Rancho Bonita. He, too, had caught my inadvertent appearance on television news.

“Please tell me that wasn’t your definition of a landing.”

“Whatever happened to, ‘Hello, Logan, I thought I’d check in to see if you’re alive or dead?’ ”

“If you were dead, you wouldn’t have answered your phone.”

“What do you need, Larry?”

“What do I need? I need my daughter to stop dating losers, that’s what I need. I need my wife to stop talking for five minutes when I come home from work – just five lousy minutes – so I can enjoy one lousy beer before she starts in on everything that needs fixing around the house, and why she’s feuding with that witch down at the nail salon. What do I need? I need to drop a hundred pounds. I need to be rich. I need peace of mind.”

“You should try becoming one with everything.”

“What is that, some of your Buddhist bullshit?”

“It means try loving your life, Larry, warts and all. But I’m guessing that’s not why you called. So, before you ask me, no, I have not yet seen Crissy Walker naked, though I did see her in a bikini, and she looks as good as you think she looks. So you can go ahead and eat your heart out right now.”

Did he appreciate vicariously my sharing with him firsthand observations of the former Playmate in her swimsuit? No question. But that wasn’t why Larry was calling.

“From what I saw on TV,” Larry said, “your insurance agent is gonna want to total out the plane, cut you some lowball check and call it a day. But that airplane, Logan, is your livelihood. And, besides, I know how much you care about the piece of junk – like it’s your little buddy or something.”

“What are you telling me, Larry?”

“I’m telling you to tell your insurance agent to stick it when he gets out his checkbook. Tell him you’ll take him to court if he doesn’t give you every penny of what that plane’s really worth. Then hire a flatbed, get the Duck back up here to Rancho Bonita, and I’ll put it back together for you. We can work out the money later.”

Hookers and nurses are supposed to have hearts of gold. But nearsighted, 320-pound airplane mechanics with bad knees and terrible outlooks on life are not typically known for their generosity.

“You’re a credit to your species, Larry, whatever species that is.”

“I’m trying to cut you a break and you call me names?”

He was right. My plane was in pieces, my ex-wife wasn’t talking to me, my cat was AWOL, and somebody wanted me dead. But there’s never any excuse for bad manners.

“I’m sorry, Larry. I’ll repay you. Just as soon as business picks up. A few more students and I’ll be back in the black. Every dime. I swear.”

He snorted like he’d heard the same promise from me many times before which, in truth, he had.

“Listen,” Larry said, “I’m just glad you’re OK – but that doesn’t mean we’re goddamn engaged or anything. You’ll still owe me. Let’s not forget that.”

“I won’t forget, Larry.”

I passed on my regards to Mrs. Larry and their teenaged daughter, neither of whom I’d ever met face-to-face, and walked into Champion Jet Center.

Kimberly the counter clerk was not scheduled to work until the next day, according to the young woman on duty who was garbed, like Kimberly, in a navy blue skirt and matching blazer. Her name tag identified her as “Rita.” She claimed to know nothing of what had happened to the Ruptured Duck the day before. Any questions as to who may have had access to my airplane while it was parked in front of Champion would have to be directed to her manager, she said, and he had the day off. I asked her if Champion maintained any surveillance cameras that could’ve showed someone tinkering with the Ruptured Duck’s engine. She shrugged apologetically.

“I’m really sorry. I just started working here. Maybe you could talk to the airport director. I’m pretty sure his office is, like, in the terminal. He’s, like, in charge of everything.”

“That’s, like, an excellent idea.”

I left my card along with a request to have her manager call me as soon as he got in.

* * *

The airport’s director was away for the day – does anyone in this country still work anymore? – but his assistant was in. He was a ginger-haired thirty-year-old with a pencil neck and baggy, tired eyes who said he’d heard about the crash and wanted to offer his condolences. His name, he said, shaking my hand flaccidly, was Andrew Gresham.

“Somebody tampered with my engine. That’s why my plane went down.”

“Geez. You’re kidding. Hadn’t heard that one.”

I asked about the airport’s surveillance cameras. Andrew said he wasn’t authorized to discuss airport security measures. I asked whether the airport maintained a master list of people who had access to transient airplanes parked along the flight line. He said there was undoubtedly such a list but that I would not be allowed access to it.

“You’re not helping much, Andy. In fact, you’re the opposite of help. My airplane’s in pieces because somebody at your airport decided to test the theory that what goes up must come down, and you can’t – or won’t – provide me any information that could help me locate the people responsible? What if this guy is some kind of deranged wacko who has it in for general aviation? Do you have any idea how many pilots could be at risk?”

Granted, I was laying it on thick, but I figured I had nothing to lose.

“Sir, I get where you’re coming from,” Andrew said, “and our office will cooperate fully with any investigation the FAA has going, or any other agency, for that matter, but I really can’t—”

“What if it was your airplane, Andy?” I said, cutting him off. “What would you do, wait for some government investigation to play out? That could take years. Have you worked with the FAA? Look up the word ‘bureaucracy’ in the dictionary. Do you know what you’ll find? A picture of FAA headquarters.”

Andy reiterated that he empathized with my situation, but said his hands were tied. He simply was not authorized to release any information.

The words, “I understand,” slipped from my mouth before I realized I’d even formed them. I found myself more pleased than upset. Understanding is the first step toward acceptance, and acceptance is the first step to achieving inner peace – even if there still remained a large part of me that wanted to wring Andy’s bureaucratic pencil neck on principle alone.

* * *

It was nearly noon by the time I left the airport manager’s office. Inside the terminal lobby, I caught a whiff of Mexican food. Nothing quite whets the appetite like the fragrance of boiling lard, especially when you’ve missed breakfast. A sign pointed to a restaurant on the terminal building’s second floor. I bounded up the stairs.

“Welcome to Casa Machado. Would you like a table by the window? You can see the airplanes that way.”

“Bueno.”

I followed the young hostess in her colorful Mexican skirt. The restaurant was Spanish baroque in décor. Models of airplanes hung from the ceiling. A busboy delivered water, salsa, and a basket of warm tortilla chips almost before I’d sat down.

“Would you like something to drink? Iced tea?”

“How ’bout an Arnold Palmer?”

The busboy nodded regally, almost bowing, and went to fetch my drink.

I scanned the menu, then punched in Savannah’s number on my phone again. Still no answer. Her conspicuous silence weighed heavily. It’s hard to reconcile with a former spouse when she’s about as communicative as a terrorist on the lam.

“Have you had a chance to decide?” The waitress was big and brown, with a moist radiant smile.

“What is your expert opinion of the chile verde burrito?”

“Muy delicioso.”

“Sold.”

She jotted down my order, scooped up my menu, smiled that smile, and left for the kitchen. I gazed out the window as a yellow airplane came in for landing.

Two old men, each pushing ninety, were sitting at the next table over, both finished with lunch, eyeing the same plane.

“What is that, a T-6?” one of them asked me, squinting hard out the window.

“It is.”

“Thought so. Did my advanced training in one of those babies.” His accent was straight out of Chicago. His wire-frame aviator bifocals seemed too large for his wizened face, as did his “56th Fighter Group” baseball cap. “Good airplane, that Texan.”

“Great airplane, that Texan,” I said. It took me a second to remember him. “Didn’t I see you on TV last night?”

He grinned yellow teeth. “Sure hope it wasn’t on America’s Most Wanted.”

“On the news. You heard the engine on that Cessna before it went down.”

“Been near seventy years since I heard an engine like that. It was attached to the airplane I was flying at the time. Cost me two years, cooling my heels in a German stalag, courtesy of Herr Hitler.”

He’d gone to work for Pan Am flying DC-3’s after the war, he volunteered without me asking, and retired three decades later as a 747 captain, with more than 40,000 hours logged. I was impressed.

“The 56th flew Thunderbolts,” I said, pointing to his cap.

He seemed pleased that I would know such trivia. “You a pilot?”

“I flew Thunderbolt II’s in Desert Storm. Mind if I join you gentlemen?”

“That all depends,” he said, teasingly. “Are you a good pilot?”

“You wouldn’t have known by what happened yesterday. That was my Cessna.”

“The one that went down? That was you?”

I nodded.

The old man leaned across the table and yelled at his friend. “That was his Cessna that went down yesterday!”

His friend, a frail-looking fellow with hearing aids in both ears, took a long moment to digest the information, looking over at me not unpleasantly, then finally nodded like he understood. “Glad you’re still kicking!” he said to me loudly.

“He can’t hear too good and I don’t see too good,” the old man in the baseball cap said. “Together we make one helluva pilot. I’m Ernie Holland, by the way. Everybody calls me Dutch.”

“Cordell Logan.”

I shook his knobby hand, grabbed my water glass and sat down at their table.

“That tin-eared crumb bum you’re sittin’ next to is Al Demaerschalk,” Holland said. “Al’s an ace. Flew Sabres in Korea. Bagged three MiG-15’s in one day over the Yalu.”

“Say again?” Al said cupping his ear.

“I said you’re a crumb bum!”

Al nodded and gave me a modest shrug, his eyes twinkling.

“Al could tell ya how many rivets were on the underside of the wing, every detail,” Dutch said. “Got one of those Kodak memories. Remembers everything, even if he don’t hear too good anymore.”

I shook Demaerschalk’s hand. “It’s an honor to meet you both.”

“So what’s the story on your engine?” Dutch Holland said. “What happened? Why’d it fail?”

“It was tampered with.”

The old man leaned forward on his elbows and gave me a quizzical look. The irises of his hazel-brown eyes were clouded with cataracts.

“Tampered with?”

“Somebody plugged the breather line with a wad of duct tape. They say duct tape has a thousand uses? Make it a thousand and one.”

Holland leaned across the table to Demaerschalk and shouted, “They tampered with his engine!”

“What?”

“THEY TAMPERED WITH HIS ENGINE!”

Other diners paused mid-bite to glance over.

Demaerschalk looked at Holland, then at me, then back at Holland, with a sudden desperation in his eyes. “I gotta use the john,” the old man said, again too loudly, and got to his feet unsteadily.

Holland watched his friend totter away. Then he glanced over his shoulder, making sure nobody could overhear us. “I think I might’ve seen something,” he said in a confiding tone. “I mean as far as your airplane goes.”

“What did you see, Dutch?”

Holland leaned closer and lowered his voice even more.

“Somebody tinkering with your ship.”

We waited for his friend, Al, to come back from the men’s room, but he never showed.