“‘Her’? Who’s her? Sam? What do you mean?”
He spoke quickly. “Helen Clark. Tell her it’s my gift. And give her the Queen. She’ll have the cash. Here’s all you have to remember. King, Queen, Sam. The Queen’s in the plane. And you can count on Raffy. Tell Raffy to be ready to do what he always does. I’ve got to go. I love you, baby. Good-bye.”
“Dad! Don’t disappear on me again!”
“Good-bye. I’m so glad I got to see you.”
“Dad!”
Her shout awakened Dan. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s my dad. He was just on the phone.”
They dressed quickly and hurried down to the pool. It was empty. They couldn’t find her father on the grounds or in any place they searched up and down the street.
But back at the pool they saw a cell phone lying silvery on the patio bar counter, like a good-bye gift. It was Dan’s phone.
Annie and Dan talked late into the night. What had her father meant by “our picture” being what Fierson wanted? Why should Annie give that picture, whatever it was, to Diaz’s mistress instead? Annie understood trading the Queen for cash, but how was she supposed to find either the Queen or Helen Clark? Her father had sounded so strange on the phone that maybe he didn’t even really know what he was saying; mostly he was rambling on about old movies and the moon. But somehow he knew Annie was going to the base at Sigsbee in the morning; he knew the name of the State department representative, McAllister Fierson, for whom the meeting had been postponed. Dan said, “It’s got to be FBI. He must have talked to some agent, about this deal he turned down.”
“The only thing clear is, he wants to sell the Queen to Diaz and he needs me to make the trade.” In St. Louis, the Queen had been hidden in a rear panel of the King of the Sky. Maybe that’s what her father had meant by “The Queen is in the plane.” He’d hidden it in his amphibian plane that was parked here in Key West, in a panel the way he’d hidden it in the King. “King Queen.” But why had he added “Sam” to his list of the three words she should not forget? And why should she count on Raffy to do anything?
Dan said it sounded as if her father might have some sort of photograph that he at least thought would be of interest to the government. There was no telling what sort of blackmail goodies Jack might have hidden away in places to which he’d illegally flown the Cessna. And after all, they knew he could hang onto photos for a long time, despite his vagabond life. Hadn’t he kept those baby photos of Annie?
Crouched on the bed, Annie hugged her knees. “I’m scared for him.”
Dan shrugged. “He wouldn’t take a deal for eighteen days, much less eighteen months. That man is not going to jail if he can help it. I don’t know what he’s up to but it’s sure not plea-bargaining.”
Annie nodded. “No, he doesn’t like small spaces.” She was surprised by her pride at the extensive flying her father had apparently done and flying of a dangerous kind too. “He’s a flyer.” She smiled.
***
Annie was falling asleep with Dan’s phone on the pillow, in case there was another phone call from her father. She was thinking about why and when he had first wanted to fly, about all the different childhood dreams he’d reached for but failed at, or forgotten. Had there ever been a gift from his parents as key for him as the King of the Sky had been for her? She doubted it. Her father and Sam appeared to remember their childhoods so unhappily that they didn’t want to remember them at all.
But now that Annie thought back, now that she let herself remember those seven years with Jack Peregrine on the road, what she remembered was not unhappiness but stars, poems, praise. She remembered dance and song and laughing.
She thought back to Raffy’s singing to her.
What is love? ’Tis not hereafter.
Present mirth hath present laughter.
What’s to come is still unsure.
She remembered laughter.
part four
West
Chapter 48
Tomorrow Is Forever
Early in the morning, Georgette, about to leave for Emerald Hospital, saw Clark Goode in the front yard of Pilgrim’s Rest, where he was raking up the few remaining branches from the past weekend’s storm. Teddy the old Shih Tzu lay down on the leaves as soon as there were enough to make a cushion.
Georgette raised her briefcase and waved it at Clark. “Work! It’s what I do instead of a life,” she called. “Where’s Sam?”
“Moving furniture into Jack’s room.”
Georgette opened her hands in an inquiring gesture. “According to Brad, Jack’s either dead or disappeared.”
“I wish he’d make up his mind.” Hoisting the rake over his shoulder, Clark strolled across the gravel drive to her. “Want to come to ‘Play It, Sam’ tonight? She’s showing some island movies.”
“Like Blue Lagoon?”
“More like L’Avventura.”
“I’d rather take inorganic chemistry again.” Georgette put down her briefcase while she searched for her car keys in her purse.
“I know you haven’t heard this one. One hydrogen atom says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other one says, ‘Are you sure?’ First one says, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’” Clark held the rake out like a vaudeville cane, slow-dancing sideways.
“You’re right; I haven’t heard it.” She found her keys, shook them at him. “Clark, you know how I feel about voting for politicians: it only encourages them? Well, that’s one reason why I don’t laugh at your puns.” She picked up her briefcase. “Brad said Sergeant Hart arrested Annie. I was feeling guilty because I didn’t tell her about Ruthie, but frankly she’s got enough on her plate as it is.”
“Told her what?” Clark pulled leaves from the rake. “That Sam’s got the idea that Ruthie’s Annie’s mother?”
Georgette wryly noted, “Jack’s home movies of Aunt Ruthie were a lot more riveting than L’Avventura’s going to be. Ruthie was hot.”
Clark glanced across the yard at the Nickerson house. “Yes, she was.” Taking off his glasses, he rubbed at his eyes. “But don’t believe everything you hear.”
“I don’t,” said Georgette, opening her car door. “I’ve got a patient who tells me he’s Jesus Christ.”
“Well,” smiled the tall thin man, pulling the last leaves from the rake prongs, “Jesus did say He was coming back.”
“This man also thinks cockroaches are crawling all over him.”
Clark told her that when he was a POW in Hanoi, cockroaches were crawling all over him.
“Clark, you’re getting old. Unless they watch the History Channel like me, people my age don’t know Hanoi from Hamas.” Georgette started her engine. “Maybe we should get some bail money together for Annie. And a lawyer who can go for an insanity plea.” Annie had either suffered a radical psychotic breakdown or she was living a very romantic life of the sort Georgette had always wanted to live herself. Well, romantic except for the fact that she might soon be killed or court-martialed.
“Georgette, honey, with love, I think crazy’s the only way to go.” Clark stepped away from her car. “Meanwhile, you sure are on the phone with Brad a lot.”
“It’s not love. I’m not that nuts.”
They heard something loud, crashing; the noise came from inside Pilgrim’s Rest and was followed by a scream.
“That’s Sam!” Clark took off running. Georgette was out of her car and caught up with him on the porch.
Bounding up the stairs, they both kept calling “Sam!” They found her on the floor of the hallway on the second floor. She was pinned beneath a heavy walnut armoire. It had fallen over on her leg. She was gray-faced and panting for breath.
“Sam, don’t move,” Clark instructed her.
She looked up at him, her pupils contracted, her face clammy. “Move?” She gasped. “Move? A two-ton armoire’s on top of me. Plus I think I had a stroke.”
“You didn’t. You’re okay,” Georgette said.
“Get this th
ing off me!”
Clark grasped the foot of the armoire. “Okay, Georgette, on three, we’re going to lift this end up and move it off her. Ready?”
“Go.”
They slid the armoire over on its side. Sam whispered, “Much better. I thought I could tilt it through the doorway.”
“Oh Jesus.” Clark checked her eyes, neck, then her limbs. One leg looked seriously damaged. He ran to call 911.
Sam muttered to Georgette “How do you know I didn’t have a stroke? Heart attack maybe.”
Georgette asked her, “Who’s the president?”
Sam panted, “Don’t tell me George W. Bush, because Gore won that election.”
“You’re fine,” Georgette told her. “Why are you wearing that big wide belt? That’s a weight-lifting belt.”
Sam whispered, “Who knew how much I’d need it? Don’t worry Annie about this, promise me.”
“Annie who?”
Sam lost consciousness just as the old blind Shih Tzu Teddy made it to the top of the stairs and began licking her face.
***
At Clark’s urging the ambulance sped at over 80 miles per hour to Emerald Hospital where the emergency room staff set Sam’s broken femur and made her ready for surgery. An orthopedic surgeon had driven up from Charlotte to operate on her leg, for the knee was crushed and there was possible nerve damage in the thigh area.
Clark bent over Sam’s gurney as the ER personnel bustled around them. “Sam, it’s Clark, can you hear me? You had an accident. You’re going to OR now. This doctor here’s going to do a little work on your leg.”
“I’m getting a new knee, I hope?” she mumbled. “I’ve got the Senior Singles Finals in October.”
“Maybe next October,” Clark told her, brushing his hand over her white hair. “You know what’s good about doctors? They’ve got a lot of patients.” Sam stared at him baffled. “That was a pun. It’s me, Clark? The mushroom tries to pick up a woman, tells her, ‘Hey, I’m a fun guy!’”
Sam groaned loopily, heavily drugged. “This not fair, can’t get ’way from him.” Turning her head, she saw Georgette. “Get me out.”
“Right,” Georgette agreed. “Take it from a doctor. A hospital’s the last place you want to be.” She left to go call Annie, although she’d promised Sam that she wouldn’t do so.
Weakly, Sam tried to talk to the surgeon, a thin red-haired woman in her fifties. “Only other time I’ve been here, when my mother stabbed me in the back. More or less. My arm really. I was protecting my heart.”
The surgeon hung the clipboard at Sam’s feet. “Is that a joke?”
Sam winced. “Not at the time.”
“This is Dr. Sarah Yoelson.” Clark moved to let a nurse check the IV drip. “She’ll be your surgeon today.”
“Hi there, Sam,” said Sarah.
Sam turned drugged eyes on her. “Yoelson. That was Al Jolson’s name. Father was Moshe Yoelson. Lithuanian rabbi.”
Sarah nodded. “I hadn’t heard that.”
Sam grinned sleepily. “‘You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.’”
Clark leaned over Sam to speak to the surgeon. “The Jazz Singer. She loves movies.” He moved to the head of the gurney, motioning for the nurse. “Be careful with that leg, Sarah. She’s a tennis player.” Clark patted Sam on the head. “I’ll cancel L’Avventura tonight.”
Sam smiled, morphine-high. “No, show it! ‘What’s all this crud about no movie tonight?’”
“I’ve heard that one!” The red-haired surgeon helped roll the gurney to the OR doors. “Wait a sec, don’t tell me, I’ll get it.”
Clark gave his old friend a kiss. “So, Sam, maybe we should get married. What do you say?”
Sam’s eyes fluttered closed. “Forget it. Few gay years left in me.”
He held open the doors. “Come on, Sam, old Jill will be a distant memory.”
“Old Jill is a distant memory. Everything distant memory.” Sam bit her lips from the jolt as they pushed the gurney through the OR doors.
Sarah Yoelson leaned down to Sam’s face. “Caddyshack, right?”
Sam was fading. “Mister Roberts. Watch out for Clark if you’re a radiologist.”
Clark said, “Sam, would you please just go to sleep?”
The surgeon gestured for Clark to leave the OR. “Seems like a nice guy,” she told Sam, “but I’m an orthopedic surgeon and a Lesbian.”
“‘Nobody’s perfect,’” Sam mumbled.
Outside the ER entrance, Georgette Nickerson left a message for Annie, still not knowing that her friend’s cell phone was sunk in the surf of the Atlantic Ocean. “Sam doesn’t want you to worry but she’s in the hospital. She’ll be fine. Call me back.”
Her cell phone rang as she walked back toward the doors. She assumed the caller was Annie but instead it was Brad Hopper, phoning her from Atlanta. Learning that Sam was in surgery, he urged Georgette to take her to a better hospital. After all, Emerald wasn’t Atlanta. Georgette assured him that Sam was in perfectly competent hands, even beyond the Atlanta city limits.
Brad thought it was a shame Annie was going through so much right now and mostly because of her dad. That detective Hart had sounded dead serious about her going to jail. He’d practically frog-marched her in handcuffs out of the hotel. She’d be dishonorably discharged. Her whole career, down the tubes. Should he get her a lawyer?
Privately Georgette considered the chances of Dan Hart’s actually arresting Annie miniscule to nil, even if he actually still had the power to make an arrest after being fired. But she didn’t say that. She said that finding Annie a lawyer was not Brad’s responsibility. Moreover, as Brad’s friend, she felt she should advise him that as soon as Annie wasn’t legally his wife, she would not be his legal liability either—whereas now, technically, until Brad signed those divorce papers, he might be implicated in who knows what crimes (Georgette left this vague) that the unprincipled detective Hart might devise against Annie, and against anyone connected to Annie. Georgette further suggested that there could be huge financial liability for Brad as well, civil suits from the victims of all the frauds and swindles in which Jack Peregrine had been engaged.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Brad admitted. “That’s something to worry about.”
Brad should worry about it, Georgette urged. He should just sign those divorce papers immediately. Remember: his first responsibility was to his company Hopper Jets and to his mother Mama Spring and to his sister Brandy, whose husband had left her. Brad had to take care of his nephews. Annie could take care of herself.
Brad felt very calmed by Georgette’s tone. He found himself wondering what she was looking like these days. He told Georgette that tomorrow he was going to fly up to Emerald to visit Sam in the hospital. He had always—and he choked up even thinking about it—loved Sam. Maybe Georgette could meet him at the hospital and go out to dinner with him.
Georgette didn’t think so.
Chapter 49
The Sign of the Cross
Annie had flown in and out of Boca Chica Key any number of times; she routinely clocked fifty flight hours a month as a jet instructor and often did so off Key West waters. So she’d been more accustomed than Dan to procedures at the security checkpoint, where MPs checked them in at 07.53 hours, 07, 07, 2001, and instructed them to put their personal belongings out for inspection, including their cell phones, which were not permitted inside the facility. Such things, she advised Dan, had to be tolerated at a high-security military facility.
But Dan didn’t see why he should have to pass through a scanner as if he were a grocery item. He didn’t like handing over his Swiss Army knife to the military and he said so.
The MP ignored him and crisply saluted Annie. “Please follow me, ma’am.”
At 7:59 a.m., in an NAS staff room, the young couple sat at a large oval rosewood conference table. They might have been waiting for any sort of business to start its meeting, except that Annie wore a white Navy uniform and Dan had a Miami Poli
ce Department badge hanging from his rumpled blazer and the business was U.S. Government business. There were twenty chairs on rollers around the table, sixteen of them still empty. Two uniformed naval officers, one senior to the other, their faces set, displayed excellent posture at the far end. After introductions, Lt. Commander Bok and Chief Warrant Officer Sims had nothing to say except “Mr. Fierson will be with us in a minute.” When Dan stood to stretch, loosening his tie, both officers turned their heads, not their shoulders, to glance at him briefly, then returned to the file folders they were studying.
In the deep silence of the room the sudden noise of doors opening was a shock. First slipped in a young, bone-thin woman in a stylish black pants suit, with a white shirt; she wore a headset, carried a clipboard. Two male civilians stepped around her and moved to the table. One was the chunky FBI agent who’d been wearing the porkpie hat when he’d arrested Rafael Rook in the parking lot near Rest Eternal in Miami. “Hi, Dan,” he said.
“Hi, Willie. How’s it feel? You one-up me. State one-ups you.”
“We all want the same thing.” The agent pulled out a chair.
“Think so?” Dan asked amiably. “Annie, this is Willie Grunberg. He’s been after your dad as long as I have.”
The third man to enter was older, taller, thinner, wore a much more expensive suit and had the rich slightly waved gray hair that accompanies institutional success. Indeed, his dark pinstriped suit, substantial and imposingly tailored, gave off an impression of such consequence that the suit appeared to be wearing the man inside it. He nodded affably. “Good morning, everyone. I’m McAllister Fierson. Apologies. Fog delay at Andrews. Why don’t we introduce ourselves?”
The Four Corners of the Sky Page 44