by Phil Bowie
“I don’t understand.”
She drew a sealed envelope out of her briefcase. “I’m supposed to give you this.”
He opened the envelope and unfolded the note, which said:
Dear Sam:
We still think of you as Sam. Give us a while to get used to your real name.
That newspaper reporter Ira Cohn and his girlfriend Samantha helped us find out a lot about you and about Josh’s family. We decided we want to help Josh however we can, and we left word with Valerie’s aunt and uncle to get in touch with us if you ever showed up to see the boy, which we knew you’d do if you were alive. Ira Cohn had a strong hunch you were. After you did show up the aunt kindly gave us your address and phone so Ms. Susan Davenport could get in touch with you. (How about those hooters!)
The airplane is yours. Don’t even think about saying no. Osprey was insured and we wanted to use the money for this. We belong out on our deck with our feet up, sipping salty dogs and looking at the ocean, not out there plunging around on it. When we want to go back to New England we’ll drive the Mercedes. Or get you to fly us.
Remind us to tell you the one about the handsome author and the beautiful book critic.
Thanks for giving us these priceless good days we’re living now. Come see us when you can.
Ralph and Adele Stilley
He shook his head, re-read the letter, smiled, and said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“So,” Susan Davenport said. “All I need is your signature on some paperwork and our business will be done here. There’s even an insurance binder so you can fly it right away if you want. The keys are in it.” She pulled a folder out of her briefcase, spread papers out on the glass table, and handed him a pen with the name of her business on it. “Every place there’s a red X, please.”
He leafed through everything, dutifully signing at all the Xs.
She glanced at his last signature and said, “That sure is an unusual name. Keep the pen. I have a rental car and I’ll be spending a night or two at the Sheraton, looking this area over for potential business.” She looked at him speculatively and raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you let me buy you dinner to celebrate?”
“Thank you, but I really need to get back home before too late and I’ve got a buy-or-borrow list I have to try filling first at the all-night Wal-Mart in the city.”
“A buy-or-borrow list?”
“Sorry. It’s sort of a private joke.”
She smiled radiantly and offered her hand for shaking, “Suit yourself, then. Here’s my card. If you have the slightest problem with the plane, call me. And the next time you land at Raleigh-Durham, look me up.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
As he was walking out on the apron to the plane and Susan Davenport came up to the service counter, the red-headed girl behind the counter said, “Gee, who was that guy? Those gray eyes really, like, get to you. He reminds me of, like, a wolf or something, you know?”
Susan said, “He’s just another cowboy pilot, honey. And he’s a little long in the tooth for you.”
The young man had the name “Kevin” stitched on his coveralls.
“Kevin,” Susan said, “Why don’t you show me yours and I’ll show you mine?”
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
“Why don’t you show me your fuel ticket and I’ll show you my credit card?”
“Oh. Yes, ma’am.”
“Tell me something, Kevin.”
“If I can, ma’am.”
“What time do you get off work around here?”
He did a leisurely walk-around and could not find a flaw. He sat on the soft rich-smelling leather inside and leafed through the operating handbook, noting all the numbers. The plane was immaculate. With it he would be able to start up a small charter operation much sooner than he had hoped. He had a little money left after setting up the $150,000 trust fund for Joshua. Enough to get an inexpensive brochure card printed, send out some letters, and cover operating costs and living expenses until the charter work began to pay off.
He closed the door, belted up, switched on the tail strobe, shouted “Clear,” clamped the brakes, and keyed the starter. The engine fired immediately and the prop became a fluttering gray blur. He called clearance delivery and they told him he could taxi. He did a run-up at the hold line and when the tower cleared him for takeoff he swung out to line up precisely with the dashes and pushed the throttle smoothly to the stop.
With the engine at full bellow and the plane coming alive under his hands he accelerated down the runway, faster and faster until the wheels broke free with only a gentle tug on the yoke and he felt the old familiar shot of euphoria as he ceased to be a gravity-shackled human of the weighty Earth and became a creature of the vast ephemeral sky.
He trimmed for best rate of climb, banked away toward the west, and leaned back in the seat. The sun had already rolled down beyond the Blue Ridge, shadows gathering among the glowing buildings and on the car-lit roads and in the folds of the ancient forested hills below, the sky all around painted like an old Cherokee blanket.
There was a clean bright patch in a high band of cirrus and he aimed for it, climbing strongly.
Chasing the sunset.
The End
A SPECIAL PRESENTATION OF
MICHAEL BERES’ NOVEL,
THE PRESIDENT’S NEMESIS
ISBN#1932815732
ISBN#9781932815733
Platinum Imprint US $24.95 / CDN $33.95
Political Thriller
CHAPTER 1
AT PRECISELY THE same time on two consecutive nights, the large black vehicle moved slowly through the darkness of the parking lot below Stan’s window. It could have been a Lincoln Navigator or Chevy Suburban. The headlights and taillights and side marker lights gave it a general shape, a large sport utility vehicle. He was certain it was the same vehicle both nights. If the vehicle appeared a third night this would be very curious indeed.
The first night, when the vehicle parked in front of the garbage dumpsters on the far side of the parking lot, Stan thought it might be a police vehicle, detectives on a stakeout. But why with the lights on? That first night he stood at his front window until the vehicle drove away. Slowly at first, until it got to the apartment complex entrance. Then fast, heading south around the curve on Elmwood Drive, taillights disappearing between the gas stations at the crossroads.
Stan saw the same vehicle again the next night, parked in the same spot with its lights on. As he stood at the window that second night, he saw two figures in the front seat. The passenger got out on the far side next to one of the garbage dumpsters. Only the top half of the passenger was visible moving toward the front of the vehicle. Small head, short hair, large shoulders, a man. The man lifted the lid of the garbage dumpster and placed something inside, or simply reached inside. Then back into the vehicle. No courtesy light on while the door was open, so Stan could not see faces. And like the previous night, the vehicle drove slowly out of the lot, then fast once it was on the road.
On two nights in a row at exactly one in the morning a vehicle had visited the garbage dumpsters in the parking lot and Stan’s curiosity began to torment him. If he didn’t stay up late every night he would never have seen it. But he did stay up late. Sometimes watching television—switching between the classic movie channels or the Biography or History Channels. Sometimes at his computer surfing the Web. If he didn’t stay up so late and have such an idle mind he wouldn’t have concocted dozens of reasons for two men driving up to a garbage dumpster at one in the morning and tossing something in.
Stan really hadn’t seen much of the driver, only that there was one, but because of the police stakeout idea he assumed both were men, both wearing overcoats like the guy who had gotten out and gone to the dumpster. Maybe they lived somewhere else, one of those new subdivisions way south, and were too cheap to pay a scavenger service. But a more enticing possibility was FBI agents checking someone’s garbage. So why hadn’t he seen a
flashlight? Last night the man with large shoulders opened the lid, reached inside, then closed the lid gently with both hands. No noise, no package visible, like the man was reaching in to touch the garbage, to see if there was garbage. Crazy.
Tonight, the third night, Stan had prepared for the vehicle’s arrival. He’d switched off the television at twelve-thirty and turned his lounge chair toward the window. As he sat there he thought about kidnappers picking up a ransom. But if that were the case, the man would have snatched up the ransom package and jumped back into the vehicle. And if the man had been putting something into the dumpster, what would it be? Garbage. A guy from the apartment complex who works nights, rides in to work with another guy because they both drive gas guzzlers and want to save money. A disc jockey and engineer doing the before-dawn shift at a radio station.
“Hey, man. You gonna stink up my vehicle with garbage again?”
“Only ‘til we get to the dumpster. I’m too lazy to walk it over.”
Stan rose from his chair and walked to the window. Should be in bed instead of spying on guys who’d laugh like hell if they knew a crazy bastard was watching them. But he needed to see if the vehicle returned tonight. A large vehicle tricked out with oversized wheels and maybe some other gadgets. A vehicle for someone with money to burn, or a vehicle for official business. He stared at the rows of cars and sport utes and pickups in the lot. But all of these seemed too small. He leaned close to the window looking at the vehicles parked at the far end of the lot. One vehicle parked beneath a yellowish overhead light in the distance looked like a big sport ute, but the distortion of the window glass and the distance made it impossible to tell. He waited.
Then, although the back entrance to the complex was not visible, Stan could tell that a vehicle had driven in because of the dip of headlights. Instead of a black sport ute, a large black car appeared from behind the last apartment building and turned toward him. High beams on. He backed away from the window out of the glare and watched the car approach. Once inside the complex it did not stop until it reached the garbage dumpsters. The car had come from the road, had turned into the complex for one purpose—to park at the garbage dumpsters across the lot, not more than fifty yards from his second floor window. On previous nights it had been a sport ute, tonight it appeared to be a limo.
Stan hadn’t realized he was backing up until his chair bumped against his calves. He stooped down, heard his knees crack, and watched for movement inside the limo. He knelt on the floor balancing himself, his hands on the windowsill. He thought about gangsters, hit men sizing up a hit. Or maybe terrorists hiding out in apartments nearby, preparing for an attack. He was about to reach for the phone on the end table when an orange glow appeared in his peripheral vision.
The big sport ute that had been parked at the far end of the lot beneath the overhead light had moved out and was coming this way, only its parking lights lit. Maybe the police were already watching. Maybe someone else had seen the limo and now there would be a sport-ute-limo confrontation. The sport ute with oversized wheels had a spotlight mounted on the driver’s door. He waited.
The sport ute’s parking lights lit up the bumper of the limo ahead. A foot apart, limo and sport ute stood motionless. Limo with headlights on, sport ute with an unlit spotlight.
A man got out on the far side of the sport ute and walked quickly to the limo. Big shoulders, small head, just like the man from the previous night. Still no courtesy light inside the sport ute, and now no courtesy light visible inside the limo as the man opened the rear limo door and a tall thin man got out and stood next to the big-shouldered man. The tall man raised his hand. Not like a stickup, not like a wave. Like the Pope giving a blessing. Then the big-shouldered man opened the dumpster and the thin man lifted something in. At first the package had been hidden by the limo. But as the man lifted it in, Stan saw the shopping-bag size of it for an instant before the lid was closed.
The tall man got back into the limo, and after the other man closed the door he returned to the sport ute. Then the two vehicles drove slowly out of the lot, and when they turned onto Elmwood Drive sped through the curve in one swift movement like a snake. Just before they disappeared between the darkened gas stations, the headlights of the sport ute came on.