by George Jehn
Christina hesitated for a moment. “Yours is not a good situation. I don’t want to frighten you even more, but if the bank goes to management and garnishees your paycheck the airline could fire you. You also probably signed a contract agreeing to reimburse Shuttle Air for your flight engineer training if you either resign or get fired within the first two years…”
“Shit,” Erik groaned, “I forgot about that.”
“That’s another sixty grand.”
Erik felt like he was on a roller coaster, up and down but mostly down. “I can’t let this crap fuck up my life when it’s only starting.”
“We’ve both got money problems. But yours are a lot more immediate.”
Following several long moments of uncomfortable silence, Christina looked into Erik’s sea-green eyes and whispered, “I don’t want to raise false hopes, but I might have a way out,” closely watching as he absorbed that.
Erik knew a person’s life can alter in a heartbeat; each separate moment has the potential for tremendous change, good or bad. Sometimes it depends if a person is weighed down by conscience? She might be dangling some bait and he was pretty certain there was a hook hidden in it, somewhere. But he took it anyway. “How?”
“Gimme a couple of days.”
Erik was torn between a yearning to know and an inexplicable fear of knowing.
“Remember I told you to steer clear of O’Brien? Well, if he knew you were about to default on a loan he’d fire you. There’s a strict company policy requiring pilots on first year probation to be fiscally responsible.”
“C’mon. Then you gotta tell me. What’s your idea?”
She ordered another round. After the bartender brought them, she stood up and added, “Not just yet, ‘cause I still have more details to work out, but I will tell you it’s about money and lots of it.”
She might be just over five feet tall but Erik sensed her last sentence might have a towering effect on his life.
They gulped down their remaining booze and left. Standing outside, greased by the smooth runners of alcohol Christina flaunted a seductive smile and told him, “You have my word. I won’t delay.” She recalled David was off the next day and wouldn’t be home. “I feel a bit woozy. Would you mind following me?”
“No problem. Where do you live?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Fifteen minutes later Erik pulled up in front of a boxy brick Cape style cottage located on the wrong side of the tracks in Kew Gardens, Queens. The street was narrow with many parked cars and her place was replete with security bars partially hiding unwashed windows that could have had hopeless written on them. The street was deserted, almost treeless and the pothole riddled pavement no doubt fried when the sun was shining. Christina and Erik found parking spots and he walked her to the front door along a buckling sidewalk bordered by grassless dirt and an occasional weed. When finished unlocking two deadbolts, she offered a smile as appealing as a European bonbon suggesting, “come in.” Stepping into the darkness of the silent hallway, after she flipped on a light Erik noticed with the exception of a giant screen television, the décor of the living room with peeling vinyl floor was Spartan, furnished with what appeared to be Garage Sale bits and pieces. There was a threadbare fabric sofa, along with a table and a stick floor lamp, all of which corresponded with the stale smell of poverty. The kitchen had scratched, light brown Formica countertops and a wide open window facing the rear of the house with no air conditioner protruding through the bars. She opened a grimy looking ‘frig and offered him a Bud, which he declined. The quick tour of her refuge from the world ended in the bedroom. Surprisingly, there was new furniture here including a double bed, with the edge of a clean white sheet protruding from its innards, a nice dresser and one end table with a reading light. There was a poster of Key West hanging on the wall along with a framed picture of a handsome, smiling teenaged boy on the bureau that Erik presumed was her son.
Without uttering a word he began unbuttoning his shirt, but she also had an unspoken melancholy creating an inexplicable reflex to run. Could he summon up a life rope of passion to throw her? No words were spoken as she also began disrobing and he immediately took note of how soft her skimpy lace bikini underwear appeared. Although his dick might eventually say yes, the larger head was saying no. This mysterious brew of crosscurrents and conflicting emotions was a new-fangled feeling to him. Without explanation his thoughts shifted to Carol Rodriguez and he immediately buttoned up his shirt. A silent alarm screamed out something wasn’t right and he heard himself saying, “I gotta go.”
“What’s the matter?” Christina asked while facing him, her eyes a beseeching blue with beckoning written all over them.
“I just gotta leave,” he stammered. He felt guilty standing there fully clothed staring at her now half-naked body. An undefined awkwardness enveloped him like a mist, so thick he could hardly see her through it. Quickly retreating from the bedroom, he slammed the front door closed, hurried to his car and drove off, very confused. But a short ride on that train of thought dictated he had to make a quick U-turn, not out of longing but out of worry she wouldn’t bring him into whatever might resolve his problem. After again parking the car, as he jogged back toward the house, his rest of the world-be-damned fake façade vanished and he stopped dead in his tracks. Another gut instinct screamed out an intimate night with this lady might herald the end of a more important, budding relationship. He was drawn to Carol not Christina, for reasons he wouldn’t be able to explain even to a shrink, something even he didn’t understand. There was a real dilemma because he couldn’t write Christina off since he needed her potential salvation. Time was required to sort out this tangled mess of complex emotions, when suddenly a potential temporary way out appeared. Breaking off a single wild climbing rose with huge, recently-bloomed dark red petals growing alongside a neighbor’s fence, he inserted it in her front door screen, rang the bell and quickly left.
A brooding Christina couldn’t grasp why Erik had run off like a frightened gazelle that had seen a lion stalking it. Maybe she intimidated him? Perhaps he already had a girlfriend? Or was gay? She heard the doorbell ring and dressed. Did he decide to return? When she cautiously opened it only a solitary rose greeted her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Christina spotted Erik before the next day’s flight, looking like a person might appear before visiting the dentist. She folded her thin arms across her chest and glared at him with eyes ablaze like gas jets. Her glower made the stainless steel and pale wood of the operations office with the white walls, linoleum floor and fluorescent lighting seem warm. No batted lashes. No hand on his arm. “Don’t think leaving the rose would make up for what you did,” she finally hissed at him through clenched teeth, a chill in the blue eyes and threat in her voice.
Erik attempted to walk the uneven terrain without tripping over his feet. “I’m really sorry,” he offered.
Her eyes went dark. “Don’t give me this I’m sorry crap. You couldn’t have hurt me more if you—”
“All right,” he finally said holding up his hand. “Truth is I met this other girl who kept popping into my mind. Even I don’t understand what happened.”
Her plan outweighed anything so she had to put the anger and humiliation aside, but Erik wouldn’t know that, not just yet. Right now the front and center question was whether or not to also include Woody. Besides a drinking problem, was he also broke? Owe money? Gamble? Have someone on the side? The termination of the 7 PM Boston Shuttle was chowtime and hopefully would provide the opportunity to get some answers.
After landing she asked Woody, “You gonna grab a bite?”
He hesitated only a moment. “Sure.”
After stopping in the ladies’ room she went to the employee greasy spoon, a self-se
rvice joint located in the basement of the terminal with a continual misty veil of smoke hanging in suspended animation in the grimy air, along with the smell of cooked bacon. Her order of burger and fries more resembled a plate of lard that might cause a heart attack simply by looking at it. She took one of the creaky wooden seats right next to Woody and began the conversation on a light note by asking while pointing to his stew, “You working on clogging your arteries too?” His reply was only a weak grin.
Christina held many former military flyers like Woody in pretty low esteem as most were skeptical of a woman’s piloting abilities. The irony of this wasn’t lost on her after his hangover performance. All she knew of his personal life was he lived in New Jersey, was married and had also transferred from East Coast Airlines when the operation was sold to Shuttle Air. Trying to lighten things up a bit, she asked, “You promised to tell me how you got your nickname. It wasn’t like a guy thing—was it?”
“Lots of friends thought that was the case and razzed me all the time.” He chewed slowly, as if deep in thought. “But the moniker came from my old man, a long story about getting hit on a head as tough as wood.”
A relieved Christina felt the time had arrived for the sole reason she was here. “You flew in the service. Correct?”
“Yeah, I flew P-3’s in the Navy, the military Lockheed Electra; the four-engine turboprop.”
“You got all your flight time on the P-3?”
Woody’s eyes blinked too many times. “Well, no.” He hesitated. “Before my time was up, the Navy sent me to the Boeing plant in Seattle for a lengthy stint at aircraft repair school. I got my FAA mechanic’s licenses there.”
This sounded strange to her. Like Shuttle Air, the military had invested lots of money in their pilots’ flight training. She knew other military pilots and none had done this. Why send a flyer to maintenance school? Maybe Woody also had problems there? If that was the case he would never admit to it, but his eye movement seemed to provide confirmation.
As if reading her mind, he continued. “The Navy loaned me to the Air Force where I oversaw repair work on KC-135’s, the jet transports used to refuel fighters, the military equivalent of the Boeing 707. I learned the nuts and bolts of virtually every Boeing-built jet. The maintenance officer position was my assignment for the remainder of my tour.”
Christina remained suspicious because there had to me more to this story. “How come you left the military?”
Another too-long pause until he continued “I wanted to make more money, plus my wife, Ingrid got tired of the military lifestyle. The only time we even came close to settling down was when I was in the maintenance program.”
“What about the money, our compensation?”
“Shuttle Air pays more than the military, but my wife still harps about money, always asking how long until I get a raise? Make captain? Stuff like that.” He paused to eat some more stew. “When word got out about my background, Shuttle Air’s mechanics sought my advice on some complex maintenance problems and I sometimes hang around and work and chat with them. That’s how I got the inside scoop on our engine problem.”
“That was good info. Where are you living now?”
“We own a home in Parsippany, New Jersey. I thought it would make Ingrid happy, but now she wants a new car. I feel like telling her to go get a job like lots of women do today. The entire goddamn world’s changing fast, with mothers working and all, but the bottom line is I’m here for the bottom line.”
His last comment afforded the needed opening. “You have enough?” she asked, hoping her question came across as spontaneous.
“Well. Yeah, we’re not starving.”
By now Christina was pushing the food around on her plate like she was shoveling snow.
Woody changed the subject. “Like I mentioned the other day, my father’s been real sick and the doctors diagnosed him with a chronic heart condition due to high job-related stress. I visited him practically every day while he was in the hospital.”
“What kind of job stressed him out so bad?”
“He owned a couple of businesses, with one a travel agency. That’s how I got interested in flying. He used to bring home brochures showing all these exotic places. I figured if I could get paid for flying there, why not? But he wouldn’t cough up the dough for private lessons so the military was my only option.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s out of the hospital now, but is all shriveled and pathetic-looking. I don’t think he’s gonna make it? My mother passed a while back and it looks like this might be it for him.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Christina got up after hardly even touching her daily fat requirement. Woody seemed evasive and after this conversation she trusted him even less, certainly not enough to bring him into her plan. When she returned to the cockpit, Erik was there and approximately ten minutes before departure the gate agent said there would be a short delay awaiting a connecting passenger. Neither Erik nor Woody took special note of the tall, dark-haired male passenger who boarded about ten minutes later and Christina simply grinned.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Christopher Norton plopped down in his reserved window seat, directly above the 727’s forward cargo bin. Glancing at his wristwatch, he saw it was past nine. The handsome, dark-haired U.S. Treasury agent wanted to get tonight’s Federal Reserve “Fortune Flight” as he’d dubbed it, over with. He was the sole armed guard overseeing one aspect of a lengthy process; the shipment of worn-out United States paper currency called fatigued bills in US Treasury jargon, to their final destination. Norton had signed on for this one-year tour of guard duty approximately seven months ago, but some unknown Homeland Security bureaucrat with the terrorism fight on his mind twenty-four, seven, after 9/11 subsequently decided Norton should be cross-trained as a sky marshal. In typical government fashion he was ordered to undergo eight weeks of intensive physical and psychological training at the William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ where the instructors were fixated on the various Muslim terrorist factions, including Al Qaeda. For eight seemingly never-ending weeks all the gruesome details of what these terrorists believed was a holy war, a jihad, against western values was constantly driven home. But thank God, or Allah, or whoever, so far both jobs had been simply boring.
Not withstanding the sky marshal training, his chief task remained overseeing the transport of the old currency from downtown Boston to LaGuardia airport. The bills were carried in locked satchels closely resembling green army duffel bags in the forward cargo hold of Shuttle Air’s final evening flight, right below his assigned seat. Four days per week he flew from Manhattan, where he lived in a trendy one-bedroom apartment to Boston on either the two or three o’clock shuttle flight, depending on the weather. Like most government functions there were overly complex and seemingly endless crosschecks used to ensure the money wasn’t miscounted, lost or stolen.
The mechanism was set in motion when a New England bank received mutilated or worn-out paper money in ten, twenty, fifty or larger denominations. The bill was flagged and sent to a commercial depository designated as a Federal Reserve collection agent. The agent bank would then verify the poor condition and amount and send replacement bills. The bills and receipts from banks throughout the New England area were then transported to the Boston central Federal Reserve location where government workers under the ever-watchful eye of Big Brother’s video recorders, verified the amounts and packed the bills into satchels equipped with tracking devices attached to them for dispatch to their final New York City resting place.
Norton’s job officially began when the tattered money was ready for transport to the airport. He would ride from downtown Boston to Logan along with a supervisor and several guards and the satchels were loaded into the forward cargo b
in. Just before the cargo door was secured, Norton removed the heavy plastic fasteners holding the GPS tracking devices in place and gave them to the supervisor, who would sign a paper attesting to the proper loading. Norton would then assume responsibility until the shipment was met at LaGuardia by another contingent, where he would oversee the off-loading and reattachment of other tracking devices. His job finished, he’d then drive home while the money was transported to the New York City Treasury building where it was recounted and the serial numbers scanned, officially removing the bills from circulation. The amounts were verified against the receipts in Boston and the currency was then fed directly into a giant shredder. Official Treasury estimates were ten percent of United States’ paper currency was destroyed annually in this manner. Norton often mused about how nice it would be if he could lay his hands on those fatigued bills as spending them would be just as easy as the new and maybe even easier?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Following five straight days of shuttle flights, Erik arose early on Saturday to work his flight instructing job. During breakfast his mother stated, “You look tired.”
He didn’t want to tell her about what O’Brien had said. “I guess what happened in Boston was draining. Did Dad hear about that?”
“We both saw it on the news.”
“He never mentioned anything to me.”
“He probably forgot.”
As Erik was pulling out of the driveway, Ursula stood at the window, bright sunlight streaming through windowpanes so clean the rays were unobstructed, recalling her family’s emigration from Deutschland during the 1960’s. Lots of hardship remained left over from WW II and like many of their countrymen they were smitten with the young, handsome yet tough American president who had stood up in response to the Soviet threat and declared, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Although America welcomed them with open arms, her parents joined a German-American social club to recapture a portion of what was left behind. That was where she and Joe had met, with their journey to the New World always depicted as a fairy tale. But like many things, the truth got lost somewhere in the mists of time. She was young, barely spoke the language and they were soon married, though it was a marriage of convenience and not love. After moving into their current home, she did fall in love, but with a neighbor who seemingly provided the warmth Joe lacked. Considering divorce, she went as far as to rehearse in front of the bedroom mirror how she would inform him, but before anything could be put into action she discovered her lover had departed with his family for parts unknown. One night while drinking, another neighbor informed Joe what he had already suspected and when confronted, she confessed. His cruel response made her contemplate leaving him anyway, but she had nowhere to go. Joe had made her and Erik’s lives miserable ever since, thinking Erik might not be his child, a question still gnawing at him. She turned away from these painful thoughts and resumed cleaning the house.