Flying to Pieces

by Dean Ing

  Chip's brows shot up, and he began to tick off items on his fingers.

  "Consult that pusillanimous little pissant, Alex the Wart, von Wurttemburg, who doesn't even know you, and get bad advice because the Wart wants to take over as her financial adviser." One finger down.

  Another went down with, "Hire some investigator to get your mental marbles counted. She did that, Pop. She could put your plans on ice for a while, that's what she could do."

  "Jesus H. Christ," Lovett breathed softly. "That explains the guy I deliberately acted the fool for," he said, and slapped his forehead.

  "I'd love to see his report."

  "No you wouldn't. I, uh, activated Mom's speakerphone and listened while she and the Wart talked about it. Some guy named Collingwood will testify on it. Whatever a dim cap is, it doesn't sound good."

  "Din-finished capacity. It's a kind of legal judgment," Lovett furnished, his own anger finally smouldering-partly at himself To ease Chip's worry, he reached across the table and laid a hand on the youth's wrist. "Well, of course they could try that. -Their problem is me. The day I can't convince a judge I'm still functional is the day I deserve to learn how to cut out paper dolls, if I still can."

  "Right. And it'll cost you, and meanwhile your assets will be chilled, uh, fi-ozen, and if you go on any trips you'll have to thumb your ride, and it might be seen as, well, whatever the Wart called it. Some legal term. I'm telling you, Pop, when that little squid waves a tentacle in your face, the other one's probably in your pocket."

  "So he's already in your mom's pocket. Right?"

  A sad nod of his head. "Looks that way. He's sooo refined. How could anybody with such refinement be other than genuine?" Snort. set my pri Lovett pointed a finger at Chip. "You've just orities for the day." He flnished his beer and then added, "If they haven't already moved on this today, Roxy can fieeze only what amounts to a tray of ice cubes tomorrow. And if I'm not dumb enough to let myself be served with any papers, and if it seems Re business as usual otherwise, I can be the hell and gone out of reach before. Roxy and von Warpdrive get their act together. I said maybe. Oh shit, oh dear, this is all I needed."

  He stood up, licking mayonnaise from his fingers, taking their plates to the kitchen, talking as he went. "I'm not mad at your mom, Chip. Pissed, yeah. All right, a little mad, but she thinks she's doing this for the best."

  "I know it," from the dining alcove. "I just don't like the way she got wind of you converting your assets."

  "And how was that?" Lovett kept talking as he went into his bedroom and began to dress-with a god damned tie, no less-as Chip followed.

  "She was the one who spied. Listened in on the phone. I wonder how long she's been doing that."

  Pausing to cudgel his memory, Lovett said, "She knows I'm headed for the tropics?"

  "No, just that you've suddenly decided to clean out your assets to risk everything you own on something goofy. I flat ass lied, said I didn't know. But she's sure it must be nutty as Granola." w "She's got that right," Lovett smiled, making a lousy indsor knot. "But I know it's nutty. And I'm going to have fun, at it, kid. If I had any lingering doubts, this settled'em." Grumbling: "Roxy needed to talk this over with me first."

  "She needs to turn that turd, Wurttemburg, out," Chip said.

  Rough talk from a kid. Worse still, it sounded exactly like Lovett himself. Rule One: they copy your worst habits first, he thought. Lovett tch, tch'ed as he zipped up and slid into his best polished loafers.

  "She needs," he said, pointing his finger again, "the spanking I never gave her."

  Lovett filled his pockets with the right junk, rubbed his hands together. "Okay, you drive, I'll nagivate. Hell, I gotta remember not to screw with the language that way; sounds like ol' rockin' chair's got me. Anyway, this may be a bad day for you but it'll save me some time, and we don't know yet whether we're too late."

  You're not nuts, Pop, just hyperactive."

  From the mouths of babes," Lovett said, waving the youth to follow as he tossed keys to him. "We're off."

  "You know," Chip mused behind him, "sometimes I think maybe we are."

  "Like I told Domenica, you didn't get it out of the ground," Lovett said, and cackled.

  Lovett's broker, a wisecracking yuppie hoodlum named Peter Tyme, tried for roughly three minutes to talk Lovett out of disemboweling his account. When in full chat, Tyme could talk two hundred and fifty words a minute with gusts up to three hundred. "So just sit down and wipe that look out of your eye, Wade," he was saying, "and fill me in on-"

  "It is five after nine, Pete," Lovett interrupted, staring at the clock on the one wall that wasn't mostly solid glass. "If you ever want another outrageous commission from me, you'll give me what I want right now instead of telling me why I don't want it when I damned well do."

  Tyme rubbed his chin in doubt, then made an internal decision. "You're acting like a manic-depressive caught on the upswing, but what else is new? I can't just cash you out completely on the spot, Wade." Turning to his keyboard and screen, Tyme punched up the Lovett account, muttering as he scanned. "Market's open in the Big Apple. None of your stuff's in joint name, so I could sell in cash trade and give you a check for-how much of it do you want?"

  "How much is all?"

  With another look at the screen, Tyme grimaced. "Say, a hundred and fifty thou at current prices.. Whichlcan'tpayouttoday," he rushed on.

  Lovett began to seethe. "How much today? Right fucking now."

  "I'd have to hold back, oh, ten thousand for three days 'til the trades settle. That's just the way-"

  "Do it," said Lovett, relaxing a bit.

  "Not quite so fast. Auditors will want some reason on this form, or my name's Chazz Keating, alias mud."

  Lovett chewed his lip a moment. "Call it a gamble, Pete. Good odds, but a gamble. If, ah, when I come back, it comes back in multiples."

  "You didn't say that, and don't say it again," Tyme warned.

  "Well, shit, it's-another investment. Real estate," said Lovett, brightening. "Sort of a mining venture," he added. It was on the tip of his tongue to say, "offshore," but he held back.

  "Mining venture," Tyme repeated, squinting at his client, shaking his head. "If I were the suspicious type, I could guess you're digging a legal hole for me to jump into. But this whole thing is your idea, and I told you not to, and you told me to go to blazes. Okay, sane people have been known to do that. Not that you qualify by any stretch of the imagination. You're sure you don't want to do lunch on me, think this over, settle down?"

  "Dead solid certain. Watching that niinute hand crawl unsettles me, for reasons you may discover." From the way his broker leaned back, he knew he'd said too much. He leaned forward and stared hard into his broker's eyes. "Pete, I have broken no law, and I've made us both some money over the years. Give-me-my-cash."

  Tyme sighed, nodded, and addressed his keyboard, with occasional utterances to report sale prices. From time to time he would pause to glance Lovett's way, and always as if expecting Wade Lovett to suddenly levitate from his chair and go zooming around the ceiling. "Can't hand over cash, you know," he said during a lull. "I can make out a check you'll present to a bank, for the benefit of one Wade 'wild man' Lovett."

  Lovett gave that some thought, watching the clock's hands creep, feeling as if they were ants on his spine. "How many banks do you have this kind of buddy-system with?"

  "Nearly a dozen, in Wichita."

  "I want seven checks on the nearest seven banks, for twenty thousand each. And a printout of the bank addresses.

  I intend to pay them calls on short notice. Can do?" A nod from Tyme.

  "How long in minutes?"

  "Boy, you're a piece of work. Half an hour, with luck. Are your hands sweating?"

  "No, why?'.'

  "They should be. Mine are," Tyme said with a doleful glance. "Most of the lunatics I know don't manage to hide it as well as you do." At one point he took a piece of printout and handed it over. It listed the addres
ses of seven banks in greater Wichita. Presently he turned back to Lovett. "I haven't cleaned you out; you still have an account and that makes some things easier. You don't want to hear me say, regulations'?

  All right then, rules." He hopped up and disappeared into the hall with a printout, leaving Lovett to stew about the time. His stride on returning was not his usual jaunty affair. "They'll be ready in a few minutes. Anything else I can do? Novocaine? Psychiatric evaluation?"

  "Don't say that," Lovett pleaded. "You can tell me whether someone could have frozen my investments against my will."

  "Court order," Tyme shrugged. "A circuit court can do that to protect assets." His eyes gleamed with conjecture. "At banks, too. I'm guessing you had that in mind, not putting all your nest eggs in one basket.

  Don'tconfinnit," he said in a rmcroburst, waving his hands before him.

  "Who would deliver papers like that to you?"

  "It'd usually be an attorney. Like the guy I see hassling our receptionist out front," he added, nodding at the clear glass wall. "I know that one. Biggest firm in town, biggest prink in Kansas."

  Lovett knew that Roxy would gravitate to a big firm. He stood up, took one look, and turned his back on the scene. Though he didn't recognize the man with the receptionist, Lovett himself might be recognized. "I pick up the checks from the receptionist?"

  "If I tell her to," Tyme said.

  "Use that phone and tell her to the instant that shylock turns away.

  This may be a false alann but-just in case the guy mentions my name, Pete, stroke him around. Gimme time to cash some small checks."

  "I can try," Tyme said, smiling. "I don't get this kind of thing often.

  'Course, when I do, I'd be smart to call our inhouse attorney, and then sit here while they impress each other, before we got down to cases."

  "How long would that take?"

  "About three weeks, if I know those two," Tyme said with a grin of pure impudence. "You can go around and come back in the front way, if that'll help."

  Peter Tyme stood, hands on hips, and watched Lovett disappear through a side exit while, through two glass partitions, he saw the approach'of a natty little man-of-war complete with briefcase and, unless Tyme's eyes were faulty, grasping what looked like a folded court order as though it were a flaming sword.

  One of those seven banks held Lovett's checking and savings accounts, and he hit it first while Chip waited, engine running. He used up twenty minutes because it takes a lot of time to count out several hundred big bills while cashing out two accounts and a whopping check. They scooted through traffic to two more banks. By ten-thirty, the rear seat of Lovett's rental car was strewn with a jumble of fat manila envelopes carrying more green stuff than the average flower bed. His brush with spastic colon came from the biggest bank in town. "If you'll just wait a moment," said the teller after consulting her inevitable screen, and started to whirr away.

  But Lovett had seen her eyes narrow before she glanced back to him, and,

  "Just leave my cashier's check with me, please," he said, and she did.

  He held the check, beginning to sweat, until a rumpled gent in a suit arrived with his paw out thrust, all, smiles and bullshit and bonhomie.

  He was acting manager, he said, and he wasn't sure the bank had that much disbursible cash on hand.

  Lovett's return smile was guarded. "What's the matter, didn't you guys install a big enough mattress?"

  Well, not exactly, said the man, as if no joke had been made, almost as if this were a time for smiling, but not for joking. But if Mr. Lovett didn't mind, they would need some time to clear that check.

  "A cashier's check? That's what these things are for. It's pre-cleared,"

  Lovett protested.

  "Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. But occasionally some utegularity crops up. You know how computers are," said the manager, smoothly, without a blink.

  Too smoothly. He hadn't actually said it was a computer problem; it might be a call-the-men-with-butterfly-nets problem. When he asked Lovett to sit down with him behind the carven low barrier, perhaps to have a cappuccino, Lovett saw five big letters invisibly blazoned across his forehead: STALL.

  In or out of an airplane, Wade Lovett had always been able to sense the first buffet of a stall. He put the check in his pocket, sat down in a leather chair as if prepared to camp there until doomsday, and let the manager bustle off for that cup of java. When the man returned, the leather chair was vacant and the front door was slowly hissing shut, and Lovett was headed for the final bank on his list.

  In that last bank, the computers were down. Whether that had anything to do with the fact that his transaction was conducted quickly, Lovett never knew, but by noon he had some hundred and thirty-five thousand in cash, plus a useless cashier's check that he tucked away in his attache case. Who could say: one day it might be worth something.

  Lovett changed into an old surplus flight suit at the hangar, kept all doors locked, and did not answer knocks until he heard Chip's three and two and one, in late afternoon. The kid was loaded down with brown bags: bottled drinks, a good ten pounds of sausage and cheese, and fruit in one bag. The other had rye bread, boxes of snack crackers and nonfat cream cheese on top, and below lay toilet articles with a change of clothes"-For my paranoid Pop," as Chip put it. The youth seemed to think his grandfather had gone from too little concern to unnecessary extremes of caution, but he carried out his instructions to the letter.

  Lovett cheerfully agreed that all these preparations might be pointless but, he pointed out, "Better to have it and not need it than the other way around. Besides, most of this stuff will come in handy as munchies during the meeting. What's left won't survive several days in a lumbering old C-47."

  Lovett wondered aloud if anyone had come to the apartment while Chip was accumulating the listed stuff. No one, said Chip. "Meter reader," he added offhandedly, "but I told him to come back tomorrow."

  "The meters in my apartment complex are all grouped togethgr," Lovett said evenly. His smile was faint. and wry.

  Chip, startled: "Not in your apartment?"

  Lovett eyed his grandson for one pregnant moment, then began with a comically mocking, "Duhhh. Think about it; you ever notice twenty-fqur electric meters ranked like trophies on my wall? Now tell me again about paranoia, professor."

  Chip sat down heavily and stared at nothing. "Pop," he said at length,

  "it's as if you were a fugitive from justice. But, I mean-they wouldn't shoot you or anything, would they?' I

  "Nope. Just serve me with papers; one of those cute little figamaroles with its own set of rules. If they can't face me, they can't serve me.

  But let's say they managed that. Then if I tried to leave or spend my own money before a hearing was held, I would be breaking the law. That's where cops and threats of force might come in. I just-don't-know. I'm not a professional fugitive, you know."

  "But a real gifted amateur," Chip said brightly.

  The sound of knuckles on metal echoed through the hangar, and Lovett placed a restraining hand on his grandson's shoutder. "Doesn't matter who it is," he said softly. The knock echoed again, and Lovett could feet a tremor in the shoulder beneath his hand. For a few seconds he mistook intent for fear, until Chip's gaze hardened. "Maybe you can't afford to roust him, but I could."

  "Don't. He's an officer of the court, I think. And process servers are always ready for rough stuff," Lovett said gently. They could hear footsteps moving away outside.

  As they stashed their food, Chip remained subdued until he finally burst out, "I should call Mom. Tell her how stupid this is, try talking sense to her. We should both do that. If we don't, there's nooo way you can host a B.O.F. meeting here tomorrow night."

  "You're right, I can't. You will, Chip."

  Panic-stricken, the youth shook his head. "But where are you going?"

  "Here and there, and you can help. If you want to, that is. Frankly, I could do it without you and it might be better i
f you flew back home.

  Roxy's probably chewed her nails up to the elbows by now." At this point the phone alerted them to a fresh fax message.

  "S'posed to call her anyway," Chip muttered.

  "Then call her," Lovett said, waving toward the phone which was cradled in his fax machine. They watched silently as a sheet of paper began to extrude like a tongue. I Though he did not yet read the message, Lovett's expression shifted gradually from thoughtfulness to one of good cheer. "I don't want you to have to lie to your mom on my account. Now listen carefully.' Having just received this fax, I am going to fly out of here immediately. I have, urn, new business interests on the coast, you see. Anyone who wants to conclude that I can't be found here has my blessings."

  "But the meeting, Pop!"

  "Oh, yeah. I've previously given penmssion for some group to use my hangar for a meeting. Not one of those boozy Boff blowouts Roxy's heard about, but a respectable business meeting of some kind. Right?" Chip nodded in a kind of circular motion with a grimace that implied, "Yes, but you've lost me." Lovett grinned and went on: "Promise me you'll hang around for that." A frozen instant between them. "Go ahead; promise me."

  "Well, sure," said Chip.

  "Good enough. And I promise to be back before-oh, Tuesday or so. Now call your mom as soon as I leave. She'll appreciate that.

  He began to read Reventlo's fax now as Chip displayed his hands helplessly. "Pop, I don't know about this. I mean, if you'll be gone-"

  Lovett heaved a long sigh. "I said I'd be back before Tuesday. I didn't say how much before." And with that, he winked and pulled his scarred old military-style helmet from its shelf A lot of pilots wore Western-style hats when flying; their wide brims gave extra protection at high altitude from the ultraviolet rays that made skin cancer a. real risk. Wade Lovett had the same protection in that helmet-and in a mishap, a thin layer of felt is no help at all.

  At this time of day, adjacent hangars were closed. Lovett finished his usual meticulous preflight check inside the hangar, made certain that no strangers were skulking near, and taxied his Varieze outside with a parting wave to his grandson.