Calling Card Capers

by Dan Kelly

  “I hope you’re right. That’ll mean we don’t have another crazy on our hands. One is all I can handle at the moment. Telling me you located Madame Julien was the only bit of good news I‘ve had all day, but even that was cast in shadow by your request not to call her husband with the news until we talked. Something tells me that what you have to say is going to take some of the shine off the discovery.”

  “I’m afraid so. The lady has had a very severe stroke which has left her right arm and hand completely paralyzed, her left hand partially paralyzed and has seriously affected her ability to speak. She had the stroke in the women’s restroom at one of the stores she was shopping in and was found lying on the floor unconscious and her purse was gone. At first, the manager thought she had been mugged, but she had no outward signs of that. He called 911 and an ambulance was dispatched which took her to Howard University Hospital and that’s where she’s been ever since. She was unconscious for twelve days and when she woke up she couldn’t speak or write. Since her purse was stolen, hospital personnel had no ID to work with and the police got nowhere with her picture or fingerprints. Since she’s a foreigner, she couldn’t be found in any of their data bases.”

  “Damn, this is one of those situations where you give someone something with your left hand and take it away with your right.”

  “The good news is she’s been found alive and other than the speech and paralysis aftereffects from the stroke her brain appears to be firing on all cylinders. The Head Nurse of the Coronary Care Unit told me that significant progress has been made in the recovery area for stroke victims and she has a good chance of making at least a 90% recovery.”

  “Thanks, Chet. I’ll call Andre right away. How’d I do at the news briefing today?”

  “You knocked ‘em dead, Mr. President. Ronald Reagan had nothing on you.”

  “Well, by taking a shot at the Vice President he’s demonstrated that he’s willing to go after the top guns and it has me thinking that he’ll not hesitate to go after whom he thinks is me if the situation and timing is right. The situation is close to perfect as we talk. This nut is in a pressure cooker from the media blitz and the anger he’s generating by his reaction to what the Vice President and I have said about him.

  “The timing is just about right in that he’ll have a couple of days to stew in his own juices waiting for the press conference at Walter Reed. All we can do now is wait and hope he’ll take the bait and walk into your trap.”

  As usual there are no goodbyes, just the sound of a click as he disconnects.

  As I dig into my meal Janet shows up, sits down in the chair next to mine, flashes me a megawatt smile and starts eating the bread that came with my sea bass smothered in a garlic cream sauce. After she swallows she says, “Um, that fish looks good. Does it taste good too.”

  Since I’m not a big fan of drool, I push my plate over to her and say, “Enjoy. I’ll order another one.”

  I wave our waitress over and order another fish dinner and a house salad because I know Janet will want to pick at that too. I had clam chowder with my original order. I also ordered a glass of the Argentinian Malbec that she likes. Flashing back on my conversation with Sadie earlier, I realize that I am getting to know Janet better and am liking the idea more and more.

  “From the way you’re chowing down, you must have had a day like I had, all work and no eat.”

  “I handed my response to the President’s comments at the news briefing fifteen minutes after you left and then settled in to work on some stories I’ve had in the hopper for a while now. Things were moving along splendidly until I got a call from one of my sources in a senator’s office who told me that the Vice President had been shot outside of his home, so and I had to make a beeline for the Naval Observatory. That’s where I was when you called.”

  I’m a lousy poker player as my face gives me away every time I try to bluff. I can’t tell her about my conversation with the President, but as I glance at her when she stops talking I see her giving me that bug under a microscope look and she says, “As far as I know, I’m the only reporter that knows this happened and I’ve been asked to keep it to myself until the Administration has more answers and my source gives me the go ahead. Why do I have this feeling that you already know about this?”

  “It must be some kind of bug that’s going around. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”

  Before she can go into reporter mode, my order arrives along with Sadie and I’m saved from the third degree and having to dredge up more flippant responses.

  “Good evening, Janet. I hope you had a good day and that has given you a good appetite. That sea bass you commandeered from the big guy here is imported fresh every day from Chile. There’s none better anywhere in the world. And the cream sauce is one of Morey’s special creations. Enjoy.”

  I’m waiting for her to slip into her match making mode and say something or ask something provocative, but she surprises me by moving on to the next table. That itch must be driving her crazy.

  Janet picks up where she left off when Sadie dropped by our table by saying, “An assassination attempt on the Vice President has convinced me that the Crusader is definitely in the mental state of mind to jump at just about any chance to go after the President. I think he’ll take the bait hook, line and sinker we’re laying out at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. I hope Don has made sure the President’s agenda has been edited to reflect the visit to the Medical

  Center.”

  “I’m sure it has. Don is no amateur at this kind of thing. He’ll stay on top of everything until this is history.”

  “Aldrich is completely out of control. I don’t think he has a conscience any more when it comes to killing. If anyone gets in his way, he’ll drop them without thinking twice about it. This trap has got to work. If anything goes wrong or he somehow senses that he’s being set up, a lot of people could die. I’m not going to get much sleep until this is over that’s for sure.”

  My dinner arrives, so we put the topic aside to enjoy our meals, some small talk and Reardon’s magic at the piano. While we’re sipping on an excellent after dinner brandy, my cell sounds off. It’s Don Ericson. “Hi, Don, what’s up?”

  “Aldrich that’s what.”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you know that Aldrich knows how to fly a plane?”

  “What?”

  “He was just spotted at a small private flying club stealing a plane that had just been refueled and was parked on the apron waiting for the pilot to show up. He was sitting in the cockpit when someone walked by and noticed him. The guy knows the owner of the plane and when he saw an unfamiliar face staring back at him he took a closer close look. He recognized Aldrich immediately from seeing his picture on TV and notified the tower not to give him clearance to take off.

  “Aldrich realized at the same time that he had been recognized and didn’t hesitate to taxi to the runway and take off without clearance to who knows where. There almost was a mid-air head-on collision with another plane as it was coming in for a landing.

  “This little tidbit didn’t show up in our initial database searches we conducted when we first heard his name. I just checked with the FAA and sure enough he has a current pilot’s license to fly a Cessna Skyhawk. I’m told that’s a single engine propeller type of plane. The plane he stole is a Skyhawk 172N which has a maximum cruising speed of 226 mph and a range of 575 nautical miles fully gassed up. Hell, he could be anywhere by now. We’ve got the serial number of the plane and we’ve alerted all of the airports within a radius of five hundred seventy-five miles to report any sightings to us, but there are a lot of places within an area that size he could land without any one being the wiser. It only requires 1630 feet or about three tenths of a mile to take off or land and there are a lot of lightly traveled country roads or clearings that he could use within the area.”

  “I wonder what he’s up to. After shooting the Vice President, he may have decided he’d really
be pushing his luck to hang around to take a crack at the President within a couple of days, assuming he’s already hacked into the President’s computers and knows about the Walter Reed visit. Of all of his options to get out of D. C. for a while, this is one of the better ones. He managed to get into the aircraft without being seen by anyone, including the owner, but it was his bad luck to be spotted by someone who recognized him before he could get clearance for takeoff and disappear in the evening sky.”

  Janet has been listening intently to my side of the conversation and is just about at her limits of self-control to refrain from grabbing the phone out of my hands, so I take mercy on her and tell Don to hold on a second while I pass on what he’s told me to her.

  After I clue her in she says, “Find out where this airport is. I’ve got an idea.”

  I ask Don for the location and after I pass it on to Janet and tell him she’s got an idea but hasn’t shared it with me yet he ends our conversation with, “I hope her idea is a good one because I’m fresh out of ideas, good or bad. All I can think of to do now is sit tight and wait to see if Aldrich will show up at Walter Reed.”

  Don hangs up and Janet now has that statue like look on her face that most of us get when we’re deep in thought about something, features frozen and eyes staring unblinkingly at the table top as though she is trying to burn a hole in it, but in reality her mind isn’t registering anything in sight as she’s lost in her thoughts.

  After about five minutes of this I finally say, “No more brandy for you, Janet. A stupor is not one of the most endearing assets for a woman to be sporting, especially a journalist.”

  This snaps her out of her trance as she says, “Although this brandy has a very delightful taste, an infant has more kick than it does. I’m sorry I spaced out on you, but I was thinking that maybe the Crusader has given us an opportunity to nail his hide to the wall without us even having a hammer.”

  “Explain to the dummy please.”

  “An airplane is a difficult thing to hide without advanced planning, Chet. The chances of it being spotted by someone, even out in the boonies, is pretty good because the sight and sound of a small private plane flying low which I’m betting is what Aldrich is doing is unusual and should and probably will attract attention.

  “So how does this help us nail him to the wall?”

  “This just happened and he could still be in the air. I’m thinking of contacting some people I’ve met while flying on the weekends and asking them to scramble with me to conduct an air search within the area. I know six of them that will probably go along with what I have in mind. At the same time, Don could contact the law enforcement people in the area to conduct a ground search in the most likely places a plane could be hidden. Law enforcement could also alert the residents in the area by phone to be on the lookout for the plane and notify them if they spot it anywhere.

  “With eyes in the air and on the ground we’d have a fairly decent chance of spotting the plane before it lands and if it’s spotted on the ground perhaps Aldrich will be in it or somewhere close by.”

  “It’s sure worth a try. Get on the phone and start calling your fellow pilots and I’ll phone Ericson and get him to contact the law enforcement folks in the search area.”

  I waive our waitress over and order some coffee for us and fifteen minutes later the coffee cups are empty, six raring to go pilots are on the way to the airport, but I haven’t been able to reach Don. When I dial his number nothing happens.

  As we run out of the restaurant we pass Sadie at the hostess stand I shout out, “I’ll settle up with you tomorrow. Something very important has come up and we’ve got to get to Dulles International as quickly as possible.”

  As we’re rushing through the door I hear her shout back, “Well, wherever you’re going have fun you two.”

  She just had to scratch that itch.

  Chapter 27

  We take Janet’s car and she pushes the gas pedal to the floor, leaving a patch of rubber on the asphalt in the parking lot a good ten yards long and proceeds to drive like a Mario Andretti want to be. She exceeds the speed limit by at least Mach Two and zooms through red lights without taking her foot off the gas pedal unless she absolutely has to, leaning on her horn to warn other drivers that a madwoman is at the wheel. I’m hesitating to tell her to slow down for fear it will break her concentration and she’ll lose control of the car and the next thing to be broken will be our bodies.

  By the time we arrive at the airport, I’m convinced we just set some kind of land speed record and I’m hoping she doesn’t pilot her plane like she’s just driven her car. Her six friends are waiting for us in a small terminal close to where their planes are parked, all gassed up and ready to go.

  Janet quickly rents a plane which doesn’t take long at all since she’s known to the agent behind the counter and gets seven aerial maps of the area to be searched and hands them out. They quickly decide who is going to search what section of the search area and then we all head for the planes.

  As we’re getting into the plane she’s just rented she says, “When I offered to take you up with me some weekend so you could experience the feeling of flying in a small plane, I never dreamed it would involve something like this. Do you get air sick?”

  “I never have in a commercial airliner. Why do you ask? You’re not planning to pull any more Kamikaze stunts like you did driving over here are you?”

  Laughing she replies, “Why, Chet Dawson, don’t tell me you were alarmed by my driving. I thought big guys like you were afraid of nothing.”

  “Only if we’re mentally challenged or have a death wish and you didn’t answer my question.”

  Laughing harder she says, “There shouldn’t be any reason for anything that drastic, but just in case there is there are barf bags in that compartment over there.”

  “Oh goody. That makes me feel so much better.”

  Laughing even harder which I didn’t think was possible she manages to say, “Buckle up and enjoy the friendly skies of yours truly.”

  Janet takes the lead and the rest of the planes fall in line behind her as we all taxi to the head of the runway. Dulles International is about 25 miles from Morey’s and Janet covered the distance in twenty minutes. It took about ten minutes for the rental agent to process the paperwork for Janet to get a plane and five minutes after that we are all airborne. If Don called us just after Aldrich took off in the stolen plane that means Aldrich has been in the air for approximately forty minutes if he hasn’t already landed somewhere. There’s a decent chance he’s still in the air.

  Janet climbs at full throttle to about 6,000 feet, levels off, cuts back on the speed a little to conserve fuel and says, “This little bird is a newer version of what Aldrich stole. It’s a Cessna Skyhawk 172SP, it has a maximum altitude of 14,000 feet, its most efficient cruising altitude is between 6000 and 8000 feet, but when we get to the search area I’ll descend to about 3,000 feet. At times, ground conditions permitting, I’ll dip down a little lower to get a closer look at something. This aircraft requires less room for takeoffs and landings, 960 feet vs. the 172N’s 1630 feet. These numbers I’m spouting off are for ideal flying conditions. They are affected by the wind, weather, and other factors. The winds are negligible and the weather is clear tonight with few clouds, so the reflected light off the full moon will make it a lot easier for us to spot Aldrich in the air or on the ground. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the experience.”

  It doesn’t take long for us to reach the search area and then the tension begins to build and I suddenly realize Ericson is in the dark about Janet’s idea and what it entails. “Damn! I just remembered that Don doesn’t have any idea about what we’re up to. I couldn’t get through to him at Morey’s. If your idea is to have any chance of working, he’s got to get the cooperation from the law enforcement folks in the search area. Will my cell work up here?”

  “Probably better than on the ground as there are no buildings or other obstacles to block the s
ignal.”