بخش 02 - فصل 01

PART 2: OLD PALS 1

Kermit William Hodges – plain old Bill, to his friends – drives along Airport Road with the windows rolled down and the radio turned up, singing along with Dylan’s ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.’ He’s sixty-six, no spring chicken, but he looks pretty good for a heart attack survivor. He’s lost forty pounds since the vapor-lock, and has quit eating the junk food that was killing him a little with each mouthful.

Do you want to live to see seventy-five? the cardiologist asked him. This was at his first full checkup, a couple of weeks after the pacemaker went in. If you do, give up the pork rinds and doughnuts. Make friends with salads.

As advice goes, it’s not up there with love thy neighbor as thyself, but Hodges has taken it to heart. There’s a salad in a white paper bag on the seat beside him. He’ll have plenty of time to eat it, with Dasani to wash it down, if Oliver Madden’s plane is on time. And if Madden comes at all. Holly Gibney has assured him that Madden is already on the way – she got his flight plan from a computer site called AirTracker – but it’s always possible that Madden will smell something downwind and head in another direction. He has been out there doing dirt for quite some time now, and guys like that have very educated sniffers.

Hodges passes the feeder road to the main terminals and short-term parking and continues on, following the signs that read AIR FREIGHT and SIGNATURE AIR and THOMAS ZANE AVIATION. He turns in at this last. It’s an independent fixed-base operator, huddled – almost literally – in the shadow of the much bigger Signature Air FBO next door. There are weeds sprouting from the cracked asphalt of the little parking lot, which is empty except for the front row. That has been reserved for a dozen or so rental cars. In the middle of the economies and mid-sizes, and hulking above them, is a black Lincoln Navigator with smoked glass windows. Hodges takes this as a good sign. His man does like to go in style, a common trait among dirtbags. And although his man may wear thousand-dollar suits, he is still very much a dirtbag.

Hodges bypasses the parking lot and pulls into the turnaround out front, stopping in front of a sign reading LOADING AND UNLOADING ONLY.

Hodges hopes to be loading.

He checks his watch. Quarter to eleven. He thinks of his mother saying You must always arrive early on important occasions, Billy, and the memory makes him smile. He takes his iPhone off his belt and calls the office. It rings just once.

‘Finders Keepers,’ Holly says. She always says the name of the company, no matter who’s calling; it’s one of her little tics. She has many little tics. ‘Are you there, Bill? Are you at the airport? Are you?’

Little tics aside, this Holly Gibney is very different from the one he first met four years ago, when she came to town for her aunt’s funeral, and the changes are all for the better. Although she’s sneaking the occasional cigarette again; he has smelled them on her breath.

‘I’m here,’ he says. ‘Tell me I’m gonna get lucky.’

‘Luck has nothing to do with it,’ she says. ‘AirTracker is a very good website. You might like to know that there are currently six thousand, four hundred and twelve flights in US airspace. Isn’t that interesting?’

‘Totally fascinating. Is Madden’s ETA still eleven thirty?’

‘Eleven thirty-seven, to be exact. You left your skim milk on your desk. I put it back in the fridge. Skim milk goes over very rapidly on hot days, you know. Even in an air-conditioned environment, which this is. Now.’ She nagged Hodges into the air-conditioning. Holly is a very good nagger, when she puts her mind to it.

‘Chug-a-lug, Holly,’ he says. ‘I have a Dasani.’

‘No, thank you, I’m drinking my Diet Coke. Barbara Robinson called. She wanted to talk to you. She was all serious. I told her she could call you later this afternoon. Or you’d call her.’ Uncertainty creeps into her voice. ‘Was that all right? I thought you’d want your phone available for the time being.’

‘That’s fine, Holly. Did she say what she was all serious about?’

‘No.’

‘Call her back and tell her I’ll be in touch as soon as this is wrapped up.’

‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’

‘I always am.’ Although Holly knows that’s not exactly true; he damned near got himself, Barbara’s brother Jerome, and Holly herself blown to kingdom come four years ago … and Holly’s cousin was blown up, although that came earlier. Hodges, who had been more than halfway to in love with Janey Patterson, still mourns her. And still blames himself. These days he takes care of himself for himself, but he also does it because he believes it’s what Janey would have wanted.

He tells Holly to hold the fort and returns his iPhone to the place on his belt where he used to carry his Glock before he became a Det-Ret. In retirement he always used to forget his cell, but those days are gone. What he’s doing these days isn’t quite the same as carrying a badge, but it’s not bad. In fact, it’s pretty good. Most of the fish Finders Keepers nets are minnows, but today’s is a bluefin tuna, and Hodges is stoked. He’s looking at a big payday, but that’s not the main thing. He’s engaged, that’s the main thing. Nailing bad boys like Oliver Madden is what he was made to do, and he intends to keep on doing it until he no longer can. With luck, that might be eight or nine years, and he intends to treasure every day. He believes Janey would have wanted that for him, too.

Yeah, he can hear her say, wrinkling her nose at him in that funny way she had.

Barbara Robinson was also nearly killed four years ago; she was at the fateful concert with her mother and a bunch of friends. Barbs was a cheerful, happy kid then and is a cheerful, happy teenager now – he sees her when he takes the occasional meal at the Robinson home, but he does that less often now that Jerome is away at school. Or maybe Jerome’s back for the summer. He’ll ask Barbara when he talks to her. Hodges hopes she’s not in some kind of jam. It seems unlikely. She’s your basic good kid, the kind who helps old ladies across the street.

Hodges unwraps his salad, douses it with lo-cal French, and begins to snark it up. He’s hungry. It’s good to be hungry. Hunger is a sign of health.