Angle of Attack

by Lee Baldwin

  I jump to my feet, hotly enraged. I’d been held on a variety of charges for nearly a month, before they charged me on possession with intent. “How come my public defender didn’t find that?”

  “Mr. Yamamoto pointed us to an individual in the evidence section. Records may have been falsified. It would not be easy to spot.”

  “What was Montana telling you?”

  The detective’s expression is grim. “She made a racket that we should search again. She was vague, she was casting doubt on the search protocol. Mr. Clay, it’s possible that she or someone else corrupted evidence.”

  “So you’re telling me Montana was behind that?”

  Wolfe nods. “Not conclusive yet, but it may be so.”

  He lets this sink in. It was Montana who arranged for me to spend three years in prison. Why? To protect Mick from me? No, to protect her power. If he goes down, she goes down. I was too dangerous.

  “There is another matter,” Wolfe goes on. “We made an arrest the night Agent Harrison died. Near Councilman Carruthers’ home.”

  “Really?” I am surprised. “Coincidence, or connection?”

  “We have someone here I’d like you to meet. He was found holding a Glock-40 with a suppressor in a vacant house across the street from the Councilman’s home.”

  I am shaking my head. “Detective, that hit was a fake. Montana was setting me up.”

  “We thought so too. But there was room for doubt, so we took the precaution of placing a team there.”

  “You have him?”

  Wolfe nods, starting for the door.

  “Detective, there is something I need to ask.”

  “Please.”

  “The daughter. Tharcia. Will she be taken care of?”

  “How is that any of your concern, Mr. Clay?”

  “At the least, she is my friend’s daughter. At the most, we have become friends.”

  “In a very short time, it seems.”

  “I want to know if she will be taken care of.”

  “Scarcely a concern of yours, Mr. Clay. I am sure the system will find a home for her.”

  “She’s of age, Detective. Can she collect Montana’s life insurance? Can she keep her house?”

  “Those are things you should discuss with Ms. Harrison, if she feels it appropriate.”

  Oh crap, is all I can say to myself. The system. Oh crap.

  “Please come with me now, Mr. Clay.”

  I follow down the hallway to another interview room. Standing by the door inside is the uniform cop I’d met on the way in. Inside, seated at the table, is a wiry long-haired dude in an orange jumper. His hands are cuffed behind him.

  “Mr. Estevez, please look at me,” Wolfe says.

  For a moment nothing happens, then the eyes come up and fasten on Wolfe. They shift across to me. The instant flash of recognition is unmistakable. It’s enforcer88, the dude who pressed his heavy pistol to my head the night of the blues jam. The look that passes between us carries a silent conversation that goes like this:

  You with them, or you with me?

  None of your business.

  You gonna rat me?

  None of your fucking business.

  You gonna get wasted.

  Like hell I am, pee wee.

  What I know beyond doubt is I’m looking into the flat cold eyes of Drake’s killer. The man who waited at my house to kill me. Montana’s shooter. Wolfe opens the door, I follow him out. We stand in the corridor, close enough to whisper.

  “Dude was at my party,” I say in a soft voice. “Called himself enforcer 88. Delivered a message for me to call Mick. Pulled a gun to show he meant it. Drove away in a noisy V8. I heard the same car at Spartan Stadium just before I met Montana. Leaving the parking lot.”

  The way Wolfe nods, looking at me, I see the tumblers falling into place in his head.

  “This guy might be the one who shot Drake. Don’t tell me he’s on Montana’s case roster.”

  Wolfe nods. I’m catching on.

  “Anything else you can think of? Any detail at all?”

  “There was a cigarette butt smoldering beside Montana’s jeep when I pulled up.”

  “And Agent Harrison did not smoke. I’ll review our crime scene report.”

  “Oh, also the fake DEA suits followed me to the gliderport and delivered the gun and the photos. When I talked to Mick about the Carruthers hit.”

  Wolfe nods grimly, straightens up. “Mr. Clay this has been most valuable. Thank you so much for your cooperation. And once again, I do regret calling you from Agent Harrison’s personal phone.”

  I sigh. “Had to be done, I suppose. But there is something else.”

  “Yes.” Wolfe looks tired, ready to pack it in for the day.

  “Montana’s daughter. She’s prepared to testify against Mick for child abuse. She was nine years old.” My throat is tight, I can hardly get the words out.

  Wolfe looks disgusted. “Who knows about this?”

  “Ricky. Tharcia made a full statement to Ricky Emmanuel, and a Child Protective Services counselor. She’ll testify. She has witnesses.”

  Whatever elation Wolfe might have felt at the clear opportunity to disconnect Mick McIntyre from his organization is held firmly in check as he says, “When next I see young Tharcia I shall give her my deepest condolences, and my thanks for her courage.”

  The detective turns on his heel and strides down the linoleum corridor. I head for the exit. It’s long after hours, cleaning crews are moving through the offices. Bone weary, I walk the empty parking lot to my El Camino, absently musing about where I now find myself. My former girlfriend had lived her dream, found the power she’d always lusted for by hooking onto Mick’s coattails, and had perverted the County parole system in doing so. She’d stuck me with a false rap that sent me to prison, after her boyfriend’s plan fell short. She’d tried to have me killed, and in the process, mistakenly prevented Drake from doing so. An accomplice in the evidence section suggests that further traces of the late Parole Agent’s activities will be found. A thorough house cleaning will follow wherever she has touched.

  A house cleaning that is now underway, I remind myself with muted pleasure. Parts of Mick’s network, the cases Montana controlled, are now headed back to prison.

  Did Montana want to kill me? She did fire off a round in my direction. But it was Mick pushing her buttons, always Mick. His upcoming appeal, his anger over losing fifteen diamonds to his own arrogant stupidity. But what he did to Tharcia years ago is about to attack him in a way he cannot defend. For her willingness to go public about that terrible experience, Tharcia is the hero in all of this. At least, she is for me.

  A cold morning two days later. Carla, Darla, Rayne, Tharcia and I board a motor yacht in Santa Cruz Marina, and make our way to the center of Monterey Bay. The sun fights through the morning overcast. Winter swells are heaving mountains.

  Far offshore, Tharcia and I lower to the water a small, gaily painted wooden boat. Into the boat Tharcia empties Montana’s ashes from a clear bag. Among the loose white fragments of what was once a human being, she places two diamond earrings and a gold diamond necklace. Although everyone knew Tharcia’s intention in advance, Carla cannot suppress a tortured gasp.

  Tharcia’s lips move quietly as she says goodbye. She places on the ashes a small envelope. Gently she thrusts the boat away. We watch in silence as unseen currents start the tiny vessel on its unknowable journey. Everyone manages to hold Tharcia at once as the tiny craft sails from view among the massive swells. Our boat swings about, motors for the harbor.

  Tharcia and I sit aft, watching our wake, pondering the voyage of the tiny boat, of the life that had culminated in this reality.

  I lean closer. “How you doing babe?”

  “It’s black, Stuka. I have no family and no home. My mother’s house, not my place anymore.” I hear the ache in her voice. “Stuka, was she happy?”

  Tough one, I have to think. “I saw happiness in her. Don’t know
if she let herself own it.”

  “Her pulse was with me since before mine began. It is silent now. She showed me what it means to be a woman.”

  “Yah. There are things every day I would like to say to my mom and dad.”

  “I don’t have to fear her disapproval anymore.” She’s quiet for a bit. She looks into my face, voice tinged with uncertainty, “Was she proud of me, Stuka?”

  I wrap her in my arms. “You know she was Tharcia.”

  “I’m so glad.” Her voice is muffled in our heavy coats.

  “Hey, what do you think of Christmas in Hawaii? You, me, Rayne, the twins.”

  “Anywhere. If we can all be together.” Way she says it, sounds like the only family she has.

  “Doesn’t have to be now. Anything to get away.”

  She turns to me. “Stuka, what you said. About me staying with you?”

  “I remember.” A long moment sings as we hold each other’s eyes.

  “Can we go home now?”

  Chapter 13

  The Colonel

  GETTING TO WADE’S FARM is as usual, except I need to leave my car behind. Tharcia drives me and my beater bike strapped with a wacky assortment of gear through bare dirt fields to the Salinas Greyhound station. She knows the full truth about my ‘vacation.’ The only goodbye we can manage is a breathless hug. Neither of us speaks. Her face is pale as she turns from me.

  The bus drops me and the bike somewhere near Altamont. The ride out the arroyo is uneventful except I surprise a pair of coyotes enjoying the last of what could have been a rabbit. They stare after me as though calculating their odds, but do not follow. I like coyotes.

  The air is colder as I approach Wade’s farm, the uneven dirt track across the flat now too faint to see in the waning daylight. But far across the desert floor, the bright rim of a full moon among distant clouds is a reassuring beacon. We’d chosen this night so moonlight would be an advantage.

  When Wade gets a look at my bike he has to laugh, all the junk and the big Army pack strapped to it. A couple black garbage bags complete my ensemble.

  “Where is your supermarket grocery cart?” he cracks. “Oh right, the brake locked up on you.”

  “Well it’s all necessary stuff,” I remind him, and I’m right. Parachutes, main and reserve. Day pack and hiking boots for when I’m traveling out of the landing area. Step-in coveralls, Nomex underwear for warmth and in case of fire. Ski jacket, bicycle helmet. A laptop to display the pilot’s manuals, checklists, procedures we had developed; it’s without wireless capability to avoid detection. And the five GPS units I’d insisted on. Wade congratulates me for being more paranoid than him. But he shrieks with hilarity when he sees all but one of them is rigged with its own little parachute.

  “For tail-shaking, see? Every couple hundred miles I throw one out. It floats down still broadcasting its location. Nobody can connect the dots from here to the landing site.”

  “I’m getting you professional help,” Wade replies with a grin. He beckons me after him and strides off toward the barn.

  Now here I depart from my long planning. I leave the fake ID at Wade’s. I do not dispose of my real ID or my phone, as I had long planned to do. I’d had other tail-breaking strategies too. Such as putting my real phone on a bus for New York or sending it somewhere by UPS to throw snoops and followers off my scent.

  But that was before everything changed. Now, all of it seems foolish. What I need to do is survive the flight and come home. To my real home, and to the life I will hold onto tight, if I’m alive tomorrow morning. If I’m not, tough luck.

  We’re standing between the open barn doors looking up at the Mustang. Under bright lights, the bare metal gleams silver. There is no paint on her, no tail number. Officially this aircraft does not exist. Wade has been busy, he has much to tell me.

  “You have 240 gallons on board. I only put 25 gallons in the fuselage tank, burn that off first, for stability.” That old balance thing again.

  “The wing tanks are full. Keep your speed below 300 or you’ll run out of fuel. Your burn rate is about 60 gallons per hour at that speed, which gives you an extra hour in the air in case you have trouble locating the landing zone. The hydraulics are perfect! Look at the pistons in the landing struts, three and a half inches. Just like spec!”

  Wade is clearly proud of himself. Can’t say I blame him. This Navy jet mechanic has done a superb job.

  It’s a long time till our planned 3 a.m. departure, but there’s lots to take care of and time passes quickly. Of course we have to do things like eat and talk story. Wade loves World War II history. One of the officers on board his Navy carrier got him hooked on old warbirds. I remind him that’s one of the ways he takes after me, Stuka.

  Wade had traced this P-51’s deployment to the Mediterranean theater. It’s a B model, meaning it was built in Inglewood, California around 1944, along with about 2000 others. He thinks it had flown with a fighter group of the 15th Air Force. Not many Mustangs were shipped back from Europe after D-Day, many were scrapped at their air stations or sold off locally. He is excited about the fact that one of the four 15th Air Force fighter groups was a Tuskegee unit.

  “So there’s a one-in-four chance that our plane could be a surviving Tuskegee Airmen ship,” Wade explains happily. “But I don’t have to trace that down. My buyer is confident that he can authenticate it completely, using the Air Force records. Every so often he asks for a photo of some detail, or about the condition of some part, which way a certain handle faces, what color the knob is. He’s not telling me what he makes of that, but I am confident he’ll be happy.”

  “Dude, how do you communicate with him?”

  “I Skype him from someplace reasonably far from here, using a fake IP address. They might know it’s my Skype ID, but never my location. Who I am.”

  Yeh right, just call us the Paranoid Brothers.

  Through the last couple years, proceeds from my grow operation have gone almost entirely to buying parts for the Mustang. I’d been on the hunt for P-51 parts ever since Wade hinted he had a certain semi-trailer in his barn, before I got out.

  In prison, I pitched my business plan to parole examiners as preparing for a career in vintage aircraft replacement parts. Told them there was a ton of money in it and I could employ other cons once it got going. A con job about con jobs. After getting out I bought components from all over the country, and Wade made things from scratch. When that effort added up to a complete fuselage and a wing, I spent a week out here with Wade and a couple of chain hoists mating wings and fuselage, setting the ship on her landing gear, hanging the prop. That was the first time she’d looked like an airplane, though a lot of work lay ahead.

  “This aircraft is not going to be restored, at least not by us,” Wade reminds me for the umpteenth time. “Best I could do was make her flyable.” Both of us know flying her out is the only way we can deliver such a thing. And the value of a flyable plane is greater.

  I’m in the cockpit finding places to secure all my gear. The laptop is open on my lap, where else, and we’re going over the instrument layout again.

  “I got the rear radar warning checked out,” Wade says with pride, pointing to a tiny light. “This here’s an indicator for when there’s an object on your six. The light goes red. Right here’s the on-off toggle switch.”

  “You know it works?”

  Wade grins. “I turned the system on, pointed a Skyped laptop at it, then drove the tractor around the field behind the plane. The light goes off and on. It picks up the tractor within 500 yards of your tail.”

  He’s beaming with pride, but I worry about what I might do if a tractor comes within 500 yards of my tail in flight, but I’m sure he doesn’t mean that exactly. We move to other things, checklists and procedures. Canopy release drill, how to un-dog the hand crank if I want to roll the canopy back. Such as to toss out a GPS unit over desolate terrain, which gets Wade laughing again.

  We begin the preflight in the barn t
o get the engine primed, all switches set for takeoff. We want to minimize the time the plane is out on the strip, visible from the road. However I insist on making a taxi run. I need some idea of how she handles on the ground, throttle, brakes, rudder, tail wheel, before I bring the engine to takeoff power. It will be loud enough just in taxi and run-up. The nearest house is two miles away across plowed fields. It will wake them up, but farm people are used to loud machinery at night. We’re hoping we don’t attract company.

  So what we do next is take the tractor across the road to the improvised airstrip. With Wade driving as straight as he can along the edge, I operate a spreader full of white lime. That white border down the length of the runway on pilot’s left will be my only indication of being pointed right on the airstrip. I’m not using the Mustang’s lights for takeoff.

  As we turn around at the far end of the field, I glimpse the power poles. I’ll need at least 50 feet altitude by this point so the tall landing gear will clear them. Otherwise, the mission will be over promptly and I’ll be smashed flatter than a whole-wheat pancake. Heading back, I make the line’s final 100 yards double width.

  Soon as I’m off, Wade will hook the tractor to his disc plow, and spend the next hour obliterating the runway. We’d discussed even if I auger in on takeoff, he’s to ignore the plane and destroy the runway first. Won’t be any help possible for me if that happens.

  Where the Mustang stands proud in the wide doorway, we hook the tractor to her landing gear. We’ve done the walk around, now I’m in the cockpit. The feeling I’m trying to push away is similar to the stark terror I’d felt first time I slid into bed with a naked girl.

  We continue the preflight. “Ignition off.” Wade calls out, looking at his own checklist from where he stands in front of the prop.

  “Ignition off,” I echo.

  “Mixture at Idle Cutoff.”

  “Idle Cutoff.” I move the mixture control to the marked position. At this point I have to climb down to help Wade pull the 4-blade prop through three full rotations, and it’s not easy. Even in the cold night air we’re sweating when we get that done.