The Four Corners of the Sky

by Michael Malone

  With a sigh, Trevor asked Annie to repeat details of the phone call she’d received from the Miami detective, Daniel Hart, about the Queen of the Sea. “I’ll find out what I can,” he promised. He’d also try not to get her father in worse trouble. He’d tell his contacts in Justice that Annie was just a friend trying to locate a long-missing father, that she knew nothing about anything illegal her father might be up to, and that Trevor was just doing her a personal favor.

  She pointed out, “Well, it is a personal favor.”

  “You know the government. Everything’s personal. I’m going to bed.” Trevor added that Annie’s cat was already in bed with his Westie.

  “Don’t make too much of a one-night stand.”

  “I thought Brad’s one-night stand was why you left him.”

  Annie gave a sharp laugh. “Didn’t I tell you I found out he’d already been sleeping with Melody even before we left for Desert Fox?”

  “If you’d known, you could have taken him out in Kuwait. Talk about unfriendly fire.” Trevor yawned. “I’ll call you in the morning, late in the morning. I’m turning off my phone now.”

  Back at the Admirals Club counter Annie spoke again with the receptionists. “Any chance you can help find me a seat on a plane to Miami tonight? Any plane.”

  The older woman turned to her companion. “Come on, she’s in the military. Let’s see.”

  But unfortunately, because of delays and cancellations caused by the storm, there proved to be no seats on any commercial flights to Miami, not even for the military, until 10 a.m. tomorrow. “You could try to hitch with one of the private companies,” the other receptionist proposed. “You’re Navy?”

  Annie tapped the insignia on her cap and white collar. “Yes, a lieutenant; I’m a pilot. Combat jets.” She pointed at ribbons on her shirt. “Desert Fox.”

  The women were surprised. “You were in the Gulf War?”

  When Annie nodded yes, the older receptionist solemnly crossed her hands on her chest. “I think that’s great. My cousin was in Desert Storm.”

  Annie said, “My aunt says it’s all about the oil and the armaments industries.” The woman’s frown darkened, but then Annie smiled and she smiled back. “My aunt’s an old hippie.” The younger receptionist smiled too. There was something about Annie’s smile, when she did smile, that was irresistible.

  Chapter 27

  Let’s Make It Legal

  Even near midnight on the Fourth of July 2001, Lambert–St. Louis International Airport was crowded with still largely cheerful people waiting for flights not yet delayed, with families pushing strollers, men and women lugging golf bags and tennis rackets, college students bent under backpacks, headed for far-off places.

  In the terminal connector near the Admirals Club, across from where the handsome man in jeans and boots had gone back to reading his magazine, Annie called home again.

  This time Clark answered the phone from his bed. Hearing that Jack had fled the airport after sending Annie to recover a courier case from the fuselage of the King of the Sky, Clark admitted, “Nothing about that man surprises me anymore. Come on back home, Annie.”

  “Let me talk to Sam.”

  Clark knocked at Sam’s door. “It’s Annie again.” Sam was sitting up in bed with her cell phone in her hand. “What are you up to?”

  “Nothing.”

  After listening to Annie’s story of what had happened in the airport, Sam told her, “Watch out for Sergeant Hart.”

  “Sergeant Hart? In Miami?”

  “He may be using you to get to Jack. Don’t say anything incriminating to him if he calls you. I’m getting Jack a lawyer. He shouldn’t have to die in jail. I mean, if he’s dying, which he isn’t. But if he does, bring his body back to Emerald.”

  Clark took the phone from her. “Sam’s up to something furtive here, Annie.”

  Sam shouted, “No, I’m not. Call us later.”

  ***

  In the corridor, someone grabbed Annie from behind. She spun around, defensive, assuming it was the good-looking man from the newsstand. Instead, her well-dressed, soon-to-be ex-husband Brad Hopper stood in front of her, grinning. He scooped Annie off her feet. “Hey, get you, blast from the past!”

  “God, Brad,” she finally was able to say. “What are you doing here?”

  “Why, looking all over creation for you.” He grinned his best dimpled grin, the one he had used from infancy to cajole women into spoiling him. Even his formidable mother Mama Spring had been unable to resist it, and neither (for a few years) had Annie.

  “So much for flying to Emerald, Brad, like you said you were going to.” Leaning her head around his, Annie looked up and down the corridor for the man in the blue T-shirt but didn’t see him.

  Brad set her back on her feet. “I did go to Emerald. You’d taken off for here. Then D. K. blackmailed me into giving some—get this—‘business’ friend of his a freeload ride; said if I wouldn’t do it, he wouldn’t give me taxi clearance. D. K. said this guy was trying to hook up with his girlfriend in St. Lou. Whatever.”

  Not paying much attention, she nodded. Brad kept talking. “They needed another Hopper jet here anyhow, so I figured, hell, I’ll fly it myself. Because Annie might need my help.” He gave her his sweet look.

  “That’s a lot of trouble to go to, Brad.” She was touched, she admitted. “You’ve got a mustache. It looks good.”

  “Thanks. Happy Birthday, A.” He clasped her in a hug. “Sam filled me in. Guy from air traffic was gassing on to me about this old Piper Warrior coming in on a w and a p. So I go, that’s Annie! Good job, babe. Rough?”

  “Could have been worse. Sam talks too much.”

  The little white Maltese’s head stuck out of the cloth carrier, barking shrilly. Brad jerked his hand back. “Malpy? What’s he doing here?”

  Annie pulled away, studying Brad’s face. “My dad just told me on the phone to ‘thank’ you. What does that mean? Thank you for what? Has Sam put you up to something with Dad and told you not to tell me?”

  Blushing pink, Brad stretched his arms behind his head as if he were starting an exercise. He shrugged in an unconvincing way. “Sam’s my bud. She just wants us to get back together.”

  “Wants you and her to get back together?”

  “Come on, don’t be sarcastic, A. You and me.” Malpy kept barking. Annie shoved the dog back inside his carrier bag as Brad turned truculent. “Sam said your dad was, you know, real sick. So what’s wrong with her staying in touch? You hate Jack so much, maybe she never wanted to talk about him.”

  Annie was taken aback. “Everybody in my life seems to be in touch with each other except me. Why is that?”

  He cuffed her chin, a gesture that had always annoyed her. “Here, looks like your shoulder’s bothering you.” Despite her resistance, he took Malpy’s carrier and tucked it under his arm. “Damn, this dog’s a porker.”

  Annie decided not to defend Malpy’s weight by going into the details about the courier case hidden beneath him. “So you don’t know what my dad meant by thanking you?”

  “No idea.”

  They walked down the corridor toward the food court.

  “How’s Clark? Haven’t seen him in ages,” Brad lied.

  Annie was distracted by the disappearance of the man in the blue T-shirt. “Same. Good.”

  “Not my biggest supporter but a great guy.” He looked her up and down. “You look awesome. How long’s it been since I’ve seen you?”

  “Eight months.”

  “That long? Amazing.” He gave his handsome head a shake.

  “Not really, considering we’re getting a divorce.” Annie knew Brad was lying to her about Sam and her dad, but wasn’t sure of what the lie consisted. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. As for her father, presumably he’d done just what he’d said he was going to do—flee the airport for Miami as quickly as possible—so there was no sense in continuing to wait for him here.

  She walked with Brad back p
ast the Admirals Club. “I need to fly to Miami,” she said. “But there’re no seats available.”

  He replied, “Did you eat dinner?”

  “No.”

  “You need to eat. Then we’ll figure out Miami. I know people.”

  During their marriage the only place Brad hadn’t tried to make decisions for her was up in a jet plane. He had always been proud of her skills as a pilot, just as she’d always admired his. His talent for flying was the first thing, after his looks, that she’d liked about him. But when not in the air, they were as awkward together as footless birds.

  On the upper level of the main terminal, they found a table at a “bistro” overlooking the rotunda, near where the Lindbergh plane hung from the ceiling. They ordered chef’s salads that arrived too quickly to be anything but prepackaged. Annie watched Brad eat his food the way he always had, flinging the chopped lettuce about on his plate with his fork, as if he were desperately searching for something missing. Whatever he found, he loudly tried to stab to death. This tossing and stabbing went on until his bowl was empty. The avidity of his eating had once horrified her but watching him now, what she felt was sadness. For what undefined satisfaction was he so violently looking? Why had he never been able to find peace? Why hadn’t she?

  Moved to sympathy, she reached for his hand. “Brad, did you ever feel like there was nothing else to want?” Her question confused him; he just stared perplexed at her. She smiled. “I want to apologize. Because I never made you feel peaceful and you never made me feel peaceful and I should have told you sooner it wasn’t working and you wouldn’t have had to prove it with Melody.”

  He spoke solicitously. “A, you’re just all upset. Because of your dad dying of cancer and all.” He shook his head in sympathetic mystification at the odd fact of mortality.

  She gave up, turned her neck side to side. “You’re right. I’m just all upset.”

  “It’s tough. And it’ll be tough on Sam. I’d like her to catch a break.”

  Annie looked at him carefully. He had the twitching eyes he always had when fearful of being caught out. She said, “You got my dad out of this airport for her, didn’t you?”

  “Hey, don’t be crazy.”

  Leaning over the table, Annie grabbed the sides of his head and turned him back to her. “He was in the airport; the police had spotted him and were watching the gates and he said he couldn’t risk contact with me, even though I just flew here in a fucking tornado. He told me to meet him in Miami.” Both Brad’s eyelashes were flickering, twice, a pause, twice more. When she was only five, her father had taught her how, playing poker, people can’t help giving signals about their hands. Brad had dozens of these “tells,” including the eyelash flicker. “So my question for you, Brad?” She paused for a long stare, knowing it would break him. “How are you getting my dad to Miami?”

  It took only minutes to trip Brad into admitting that he had helped Sam out (“That’s all I did, try to help!”) by talking to a friend who had a cargo express company that flew out of Lambert to Miami.

  Under the table, his leg bounced up and down. “The way Sam talked, all your dad wants is not to die in a prison cell. Why is that too much to ask?”

  Her eyebrow went up. “Sam’ll say or do anything for her brother.”

  Brad didn’t see why Sam shouldn’t.

  His logic stopped her. “Okay. I suppose it’s not too much to ask.” Annie studied the Ryan Monocoupe that had belonged to Lindbergh. “I don’t know if he’s really dying.”

  Brad shrugged sadly. “Daddy Alton was on oxygen one minute and the next minute he was on his way to heaven.” Brad horribly sounded exactly like his mother Mama Spring. She wondered if she herself would start saying things Clark or Sam said. Would she start making awful puns and comparing everything in life to an old movie?

  Brad was going on about how all he’d ever wanted was to be helpful. How his St. Louis office could bring in a machinist to look at the King of the Sky’s engine and see what could be done to get it flying again. How in the morning he could get her on a flight to Miami. Meanwhile, why didn’t Annie stay the night in St. Louis? Hopper Jets had a suite right here at the Sheraton. They could both stay. He’d sleep on the couch.

  Annie slowly shook her fork at him like a metronome. “Don’t try.”

  He looked earnest. “We’re still married.”

  “We’re legally separated. Let’s keep it legal.”

  “Tell me what you want, A, you’ve got it.”

  What she wanted was to find her father as soon as she could.

  Brad smiled. “You need a private jet.”

  “You’ve got plenty of them.”

  He tapped the embossed logo on his glossy briefcase: Hopper Jets, Inc. “That’s right. Doing great. Private jets—it’s the way everybody’s going. You hear on the news how the attorney general, what’s his name—? He’s flying private from now on, I heard that on the news tonight. The threat level.”

  “From what?”

  “Everybody’s going private. It’s the way to go. You should get out of the Navy.”

  “I love the Navy.”

  Brad shrugged. “Hey, you ask me, serving your country’s just bullshit.” He slipped the white Navy cap from her head and looked at the braided brim sadly. “I tell you, Annie. I was so over that ‘yes sir, no sir’ rulebook, do unto others. I’m about me now. Like you always said, don’t count on anybody, don’t hope, be first, keep it going, see the goal, get there. You taught me all that.”

  Annie felt disconcerted to hear her views so brutally summarized. “You make me sound like Ayn Rand for Dummies.”

  “I’m not kidding. You nailed it. And Hopper Jets’s doing great now. The tax breaks we’re getting? It’s like Fort Knox is your personal shopper. Still, I’m in the Reserves; they could haul me back. Ali Al Saleem, when I got assigned, you remember? Naval Forward Engagement? Man, I did not want to go.”

  She gave his hand a rub. “Everybody’s scared.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t scared. I was just having too much fun at the base.” He grinned. “I’m strictly off the pills. Long time now.”

  “Good…” They’d always pretended the problem was not a problem.

  They talked for a while about jet planes, about the successor to the Boeing FA-18E Super Hornet; about the old superstar, the Blackbird SR-71. Talking the language of planes had been the closest they’d gotten to intimacy. She thought about telling him she had just been chosen to do a test flight of a new F-35 Lightning II.

  The waitress was pretty in a hefty, gold-electrolyted way. Brad, as was his habit, began to flirt with her, telling her about his having once met Laura Bush, although he kept referring to the First Lady as Laurel Bush. Annie listened, puzzled that she’d never before registered how loudly Brad spoke, taking up public space as if unaware that anyone else was in it.

  Hearing that he was a pilot, the waitress pointed at Lindbergh’s Monocoupe D-145’s bright orange under-wings, suspended in air. Last night, she said, the cleaning crew had noticed a man in a security uniform, standing atop a hydraulic lift that was raised to the height of that airplane. This man had crawled into its cockpit.

  Annie interrupted. “Which man? Who was he?”

  “Well, that’s the whole point,” said the waitress. The cleaning women had assumed the man was airport personnel when he’d ascended on the lift and climbed into the plane. They’d watched him, figuring he was going to dust off the plane or something and then suddenly he’d crawled back out of the plane onto the lift and had started to do a kind of Latin dance to the Muzak, like a mambo or a salsa, right there on the little platform of the hydraulic lift. When he’d lowered himself to the floor, one of the cleaning women had told him that he was a great dancer. He’d put his arm around her and led her around the floor in big waltzing circles. Then he’d kissed all three cleaning women. He’d run away when one pointed out that he wore a baggage crew jumpsuit, which appeared to have nothing to do with maintenance of the Mon
ocoupe. “Wasn’t that weird?” the waitress asked Brad and Annie.

  “Very,” Annie agreed. She did not believe in that much coincidence. While she wasn’t sure why her father had been dancing around in air, she knew for certain that he’d been the man doing so. She pressed for further details but the waitress could give her none.

  As they waited for the check, Brad pointed out an ad for Hopper Jets on the wall. “Got our hub in Atlanta, plus new offices in Miami, Houston, and Nashville. Fleet of three-fifty. Leather, marble, whole top of the line, A.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Learjet 45s, these new Cessna Citation Mustangs.” He leaned toward her. “Quit the Navy. I’d hire you in a nanosecond.” He grinned with his old seductiveness. “You could jet a lot of celebrities around. We’ve flown stars you couldn’t even imagine.”

  “Courtney Love.”

  “Who? What’s so funny?”

  Annie shook her head. “You had your picture taken with Courtney Love, but it turned out to be a male impersonator.”

  Brad stared at her. “I don’t remember that.”

  “Sam’s got the picture of you and Courtney in one of her photo albums.” She snatched the check from the waitress who was offering it to Brad. “This is on me.” She pulled out the roll of hundred dollar bills that she’d found behind the lining of her father’s flight jacket.

  Brad pushed her hand down. “Annie, Jesus! You don’t want to be flashing that kind of wad!” Holding the money beneath the table’s edge, he looked at it. “You back to the poker?” Annie had played a lot of cards at Annapolis and had invested all the winnings in IRAs that Brad’s divorce lawyer wanted “put on the table” of their settlement. Brad said, “You didn’t use to carry so much cash.”

  She shrugged. “People change.”

  “I guess. These VIPs we jet around never carry a cent. They are living the sweet life. But I tell you this, doesn’t buy happiness.”

  “I thought you were sure it did.” Annie glanced at his hand. He still wore the thin gold band she’d put on his finger at their wedding. It seemed a long time ago.

  “No,” he insisted, “Money can’t buy you love.” Brad said he had just sold a jet to a gorgeous country-western superstar who had confided when he’d taken her on a test-flight that her whole life was miserable. “All that gold dust was just sand in her eyes.”