"Yeah, yeah," Slipper said rather disdainfully, because he was trained in the old days and understood modern forensic science about as well as he did his VCR, which he still didn't know how to work. "I already was gonna do all that."
Thirteen
Trooper Macovich had flown the First Family to the helipad downtown and then returned to the state police hangar where he was now up on a stepladder, cleaning bugs off the 430's bird-proof windshield in the glare of lamps along the tarmac.
Yeah, being a helicopter pilot was glamorous, all right, Macovich sourly thought. Nothing more exciting than hauling around the governor, who was blind as a bat, and that family of his, who acted as if they were royalty. Hell, the Crimms never thanked or praised him, and he hadn't gotten a decent raise in a while, either. It wasn't fair that Andy Brazil could be suspended for an entire year and then dance back to work as if nothing happened.
Macovich hoped Andy got what was coming to him and that everybody else did, too. Macovich wished something magic would happen in his life to help him out of debt and ease his relentless, exhausting sexual cravings. Women and most men didn't have any idea what it was like to have a stallion between your legs that was always kicking, bucking, and snorting to get out of the stall, even when the horsie, as Macovich called it, was asleep. His lustful nature had trotted into his life at a very early age, and his father used to chuckle with pride and call his boy Thorlo Thoroughbred, not realizing that little Thorlo was developing a big problem that would eventually dominate his body and his life. He had to have women, and it was expensive. He had to have women who were sexually insatiable and skilled enough to stay in the saddle no matter how hard the ride, and female company like that was hard to find.
Macovich stopped scrubbing away bugs for a moment when he noticed a Land Cruiser boldly pull up and park right in front of the state police hangar. A tough-looking white kid with dreadlocks climbed out and walked toward the helicopter as if he had every right in the world to do as he pleased.
"Hey!" Macovich said sternly. "This is a restricted area."
"And I'm lost as hell," the kid replied. "Can you tell me how to get to the regular airport? I got a flight to Petersburg in fifteen minutes and I'm gonna miss it for sure if I don't get there fast."
"There ain't no flights to Petersburg," Macovich said as he scrubbed a stubborn splat with the rag. "Petersburg's only thirty-something miles from here, so why you need to fly there? Just drive and you can get there just as quick."
The other road dogs had their windows down, listening and tensely wondering what Smoke was going to do. Man, worried Cat, if Smoke skyjacked that chopper, there wasn't a way in the world the dogs were ready to fly such a thing. Cat could see from the backseat of the Land Cruiser that the cockpit looked like a spaceship, with hundreds of overhead switches and circuit breakers and other components unfamiliar to him. He nudged Cuda.
"What we gonna do he shoot that trooper and take the chopper?" Cat asked.
"Maybe we steal a Peterbilt and haul it in the reefer?"
"Won't fit in any reefer I ever seen."
"Yeah. Have to take the top off the reefer with a blowtorch so the propeller would have some room. That the biggest propeller I ever seen."
"They're called blades," Possum corrected them. "Boats and prop planes got propellers. Not helicopters."
"Well, they still ain't gonna fit!" Cat said, annoyed.
"Just go south on the interstate and you can't miss it," Macovich summed up directions to Petersburg.
"How 'bout I pay you to drop us off in this thing?" Smoke nodded at the huge, beautiful helicopter. "How fast could it get us there?"
"Ten minutes, unless we got a head wind. But I can't give you a ride. The helicopter is used only by the governor and his family."
"Yeah? So how's he gonna know?" Smoke was getting increasingly aggressive, standing close to the stepladder and wondering if he should kick it out from under the trooper.
"There's a little Hobb's Meter in the cockpit and every time you pull up the collective, that meter knows it," Macovich explained. "Tomorrow, when I take the First Family on their next trip, the meter will say I flew the helicopter ten minutes, then sat it down, then took off again, then sat it back here at the hangar again, before I picked them up and after I dropped them off from the steak house. How I 'sposed to explain why I flew the state chopper to Petersburg unless the gov'ner think I took him there after dinner?"
"Maybe he won't remember."
This was a distinct possibility, especially after the amount of vodka the governor had consumed earlier this evening, and Macovich was getting tempted. It had been a bad week and a stressful night, and he was certain he couldn't make this month's Visa payment.
"Maybe you give us a quick joy ride in that thing?" the kid with dreadlocks suggested. "We don't really need to go to Petersburg. It's getting late."
"Nope." Macovich climbed down and shook hundreds of dead bugs out of the rag. "It ain't gonna happen, not right this minute."
Smoke was aware of the hard pistol in the small of his back. He was smart enough to realize that a skyjacking might be a little more involved than hijacking a Peterbilt, so maybe he needed to be patient and put a little more thought into this. If he shot the trooper, chances were he wouldn't be able to figure out how to fly the helicopter before someone saw him and his road dogs out here in front of the state police hangar reading instruction books and looking under the many hoods.
"You give lessons?" Smoke tried another approach.
"Yeah, I'm an instructor." Macovich popped open the luggage compartment and tossed the filthy rag inside.
"Tell you what, you give one of my guys lessons, I'll make it worth your while, as long as nobody, and I mean nobody, knows."
Smoke had already decided that Possum would take the lessons. Then, if Possum got caught, Smoke would just hire somebody else and carry on with business as usual. Possum was Smoke's least favorite road dog, anyway, and Smoke really didn't give a rat's ass what happened to him and sometimes regretted kidnapping him from the ATM machine. Smoke gave the trooper his pager number and said to give him a beep if he was interested, but he had better do it soon because Smoke was a busy man. Furthermore, Smoke said, if the trooper was bored with his low-paying, mindless job, Smoke could probably use him on his pit crew.
"You got a pit crew?" Macovich was so impressed he stopped locking up the helicopter and stared at Smoke in open admiration.
"Fuckin' A."
"Woooooo! NASCAR?"
"A driver," Smoke said, thinking fast and sounding impatient. "That's why I've got to be so secretive. Just one mention of my name and I got more fans coming at me than you got bugs hitting your window. It's like being a prisoner if you're as famous as I am."
"Wooo! What's the number of your car?" Macovich knew of no NASCAR driver with dreadlocks, but he could understand the young man's being in disguise off the track to escape his frantic groupies.
"Can't tell you, asshole," Smoke bullied him. "But you want to be on my pit crew," he added as he stalked off, "you give me a fucking call. Soon."
While Macovich was considering the opportunity that had suddenly presented itself, Andy was drinking beer and sitting listlessly inside his tiny row house on the fringes of the Fan District, where marginal people lived in denial of their surroundings.
No matter what the neighbors reiterated when they rocked on their porches at the end of long, hard days, the only thing of historical value about Andy's neighborhood was that it was old. Beyond that, the area was run down with no place to park, and sometimes people recently released from area halfway houses and clinics decided to come into the neighbors' lives without being invited. Andy's one-bedroom brownstone was neither air-conditioned nor properly heated, and it wasn't unusual for him to get power surges and spikes that were threatening to his computer.
At the moment, he didn't care if his power went off completely. A deranged killer had left evidence on his porch, and he wished Slipper wou
ld hurry up and e-mail Trooper Truth. Andy got up and shoved a chair halfway across the dining room. He angrily snatched another beer out of the kitchen refrigerator and returned to his computer.
Words began to flow through his fingers as he composed a pithy essay and posted it on the website. Slipper e-mailed Trooper Truth, and Andy answered and then fell asleep at the keyboard. When the telephone woke him up, he was slumped over with his head on the dining-room table.
"Oh, shit," he groaned, looking around, dazed and stiff as the phone continued to ring.
"Hello?" he answered, hoping it was Hammer, and that she'd already read his new essay and liked it.
"Is there somebody there named Andy Brazil?" a vaguely familiar female voice inquired over the line.
"Who wants to know?"
"This is First Lady Crimm."
"Yes, First Lady!" Andy said, startled. "What an unexpected surprise . . ."
"You're to report to the mansion at six for drinks and a light supper. That's six tonight."
"Thursday?" Andy asked, confused about what day of the week it was.
"Why, I guess it is Thursday. I don't know where the weeks go. We're in the big pale yellow house in the middle of Capitol Square on Ninth Street, right before you get to Broad. I know you're relatively new to the city and were suspended for a year and therefore might not know your way around."
First Lady Crimm handed the phone back to Pony and smiled with satisfaction as her daughters looked on from the antebellum breakfast table.
"I still think you should have discussed this with Papa first." Grace nodded at Pony to please add more butter to her grits as wind gusted in from the north and a hard rain began to fall.
"He liked the young man. I could tell," Mrs. Crimm replied. "Your father has a lot on his mind. My goodness! One minute the sun's out, and it's raining the next!"
"He notices more than you think he does. And if he's suddenly flying around with some blond-haired former city cop who's now a trooper who's been suspended before, Papa might remember he had nothing to do with it," Faith said as rain pummeled the old slate roof.
"Do with what?" the First Lady asked.
"With him suddenly flying us."
"Nonsense. We need more pilots. I don't know what's happened to all our pilots unless they're busy with the speed traps and don't have time for us anymore. And you heard what the young man said. He has something important to discuss with your papa, and I, at least, want to know what it is."
Pony was searching for the portable phone base unit. He could never find anything in the mansion and its guest houses when the Crimms lived here, and on especially trying days, he wasn't sure the prison officials had done him a favor by assigning him to the mansion's domestic staff. Other inmates who worked for the First Family were outside repairing things, doing the gardening, raking leaves, and polishing the state cars.
"I don't mean to intrude," Pony said without looking anyone in the eye. "I can't seem to find the base unit for the phone."
Constance, Grace, Faith, and the First Lady were momentarily distracted, just as they always were when someone couldn't find something. Regina was the only member of the First Family who preferred to eat unassisted. If Pony served her, it took too long. She helped herself to toast, grits, eggs over easy, another banana, and sourwood honey that the governor of North Carolina had sent last Christmas to slyly remind the Crimms that the Tar Heel state was far superior to the Commonwealth of Virginia.
"It was here a minute ago." Faith was getting frustrated, her horse-shaped face pale and scarcely visible because she had not colorized it with heavy make-up yet.
The First Family had learned the art of searching all over the house without ever moving from their chairs. Pony had never understood how people could pull this off, but then if he were so special and smart, he wouldn't be wearing a white jacket and waiting on the Crimms morning, noon, and night.
"Excuse me, Miss Faith, but where was here?" Pony politely questioned her. "When you saw it last, I mean."
"Just call the number." Regina said with a mouth full. "When it rings, you'll hear where it is."
"That only works if you've lost the phone, not when you lose the base unit," Constance snapped, impatient that phones, base units, and other things did not stay in their proper places.
"The base unit does ring, actually, as you so wisely pointed out yesterday," Pony reminded the First Lady, although she had never pointed out anything to him directly in all the terms he had worked for the Crimm family.
A solution was at hand, but the same problem persisted: Inmates were not allowed to have the First Family's private phone number. So if the base unit were to be located, a member of the First Family would have to dial the number herself, and this was strictly against protocol. The task fell into the job description of personal or administrative assistants, or grade sixes, and at this early hour, no grade sixes were at work yet.
The breakfast table turned into a tableau of the First Family's females frozen in indecision, except for Regina, who was still piling food on her plate and unmindful of protocols.
"Here." She stuck out her hand. "Give it to me, Pony."
He came around behind her and carefully set the phone by her placemat, giving her plenty of body space as if he were serving a flaming dessert. She stabbed out the secret number with honey-coated fingers and immediately the base unit rang under Regina's wadded-up housecoat on top of the mahogany sideboard.
"Hello?" Regina said into the phone, making sure she was the one who was calling. "Hello?" she tried again, crossing pajama-covered legs that reminded Pony of felt-covered tree stumps wearing filthy furry slippers. "Maybe I should sign on with the EPU." She returned the phone to Pony. "I'm bored to death of official duties."
"You couldn't be assigned to us." The First Lady was opposed to the idea and intended to discourage her daughter. "Unless you had yet another EPU trooper assigned to protect you while you were protecting your sisters, Papa, and me."
"Show me that in the Code of Virginia," Regina argued. "Bet it's not in there."
"If I may speak," Pony spoke up as he wiped off the phone and returned it to the base unit. "It's not in there--not anywhere in any section of the Code about the First Family needing to protect itself and be protected at the same time."
"Maybe you can discuss it with that handsome Trooper Brazil, and I'll let him be the one who talks you out of it," the First Lady said to Regina. "Being a trooper is very dangerous and unrewarding, and speaking of troopers, did any of you happen to read Trooper Truth this morning?"
"We just got up," Constance reminded her mother.
"Well, he told the most interesting and mysterious story about who shot J.R."
"Why's he writing about Dallas?" Faith puzzled. "That's been off the air forever."
"This is a different J.R.," the First Lady informed her daughters. "But it's a shame Dallas was canceled. Your papa never got over it and was just furious when the network took that show off the air. You know, there's nothing good on TV anymore except for the shopping channel."
A WORD ABOUT EATING EAGLES
by Trooper Truth
Quite possibly, a young man the Jamestown archaeologists nicknamed J.R. was America's first white-on-white homicide--loosely speaking, since America wasn't called America back when Jamestown was settled.
But if you visit the excavation site and take a look at the fiberglass cast of J.R.'s skeleton, you can't help but be moved by the plight of a young man dying so far from home and then lying in hard Virginia clay for four centuries before a trowel discovered the stain of his unmarked grave. J.R., by the way, means Jamestown Rediscovery and is the prefix given to every artifact and feature found on the site, which includes graves and the dead people in them. We don't know who shot J.R. At this writing, we aren't even sure who J.R. is.
But through science, J.R. has managed to tell us a thing or two. Results from radio-carbon dating confirm that he died in 1607, possibly just months after the first sett
lers arrived at Jamestown, so we can assume he was one of the 108 English men and boys who sailed from the Isle of Dogs and got stalled in the Thames. Anthropology pinpoints that he was a five-foot-five robust male with a rounded chin and small jaw, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, had no signs of arthritis and relatively good teeth, indicating his diet did not include sugar. Tests for lead, strontium, and oxygen isotopes show that he grew up in the United Kingdom, possibly in southwest London or Wales.
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