بخش 02 - فصل 05

5

Around the time Morris Bellamy is chucking his bagel and heading for the bus stop, Hodges is finishing his salad and thinking he could eat two more just like it. He puts the Styrofoam box and plastic spork back in the carryout bag and tosses it in the passenger footwell, reminding himself to dispose of his litter later. He likes his new car, a Prius that has yet to turn ten thousand miles, and does his best to keep it clean and neat. The car was Holly’s pick. ‘You’ll burn less gas and be kind to the environment,’ she told him. The woman who once hardly dared to step out of her house now runs many aspects of his life. She might let up on him a little if she had a boyfriend, but Hodges knows that’s not likely. He’s as close to a boyfriend as she’s apt to get.

It’s a good thing I love you, Holly, he thinks, or I’d have to kill you.

He hears the buzz of an approaching plane, checks his watch, and sees it’s eleven thirty-four. It appears that Oliver Madden is going to be johnny-on-the-spot, and that’s lovely. Hodges is an on-time man himself. He grabs his sportcoat from the backseat and gets out. It doesn’t hang just right because there’s heavy stuff in the front pockets.

A triangular overhang juts out above the entrance doors, and it’s at least ten degrees cooler in its shade. Hodges takes his new glasses from the jacket’s inner pocket and scans the sky to the west. The plane, now on its final approach, swells from a speck to a blotch to an identifiable shape that matches the pictures Holly has printed out: a 2008 Beechcraft KingAir 350, red with black piping. Only twelve hundred hours on the clock, and exactly eight hundred and five landings. The one he’s about to observe will be number eight-oh-six. Rated selling price, four million and change.

A man in a coverall comes out through the main door. He looks at Hodges’s car, then at Hodges. ‘You can’t park there,’ he says.

‘You don’t look all that busy today,’ Hodges says mildly.

‘Rules are rules, mister.’

‘I’ll be gone very shortly.’

‘Shortly is not the same as now. The front is for pickups and deliveries. You need to use the parking lot.’

The KingAir floats over the end of the runway, now only feet from Mother Earth. Hodges jerks a thumb at it. ‘Do you see that plane, sir? The man flying it is an extremely dirty dog. A number of people have been looking for him for a number of years, and now here he is.’

The guy in the coverall considers this as the extremely dirty dog lands the plane with nothing more than a small blue-gray puff of rubber. They watch as it disappears behind the Zane Aviation building. Then the man – probably a mechanic – turns back to Hodges. ‘Are you a cop?’

‘No,’ Hodges says, ‘but I’m in that neighborhood. Also, I know presidents.’ He holds out his loosely curled hand, palm down. A fifty-dollar bill peeps from between the knuckles.

The mechanic reaches for it, then reconsiders. ‘Is there going to be trouble?’

‘No,’ Hodges says.

The man in the coverall takes the fifty. ‘I’m supposed to bring that Navigator around for him. Right where you’re parked. That’s the only reason I gave you grief about it.’

Now that Hodges thinks of it, that’s not a bad idea. ‘Why don’t you go on and do that? Pull it up behind my car, nice and tight. Then you might have business somewhere else for fifteen minutes or so.’

‘Always stuff to do in Hangar A,’ the man in the coverall agrees. ‘Hey, you’re not carrying a gun, are you?’

‘No.’

‘What about the guy in the KingAir?’

‘He won’t have one, either.’ This is almost certainly true, but in the unlikely event Madden does have one, it will probably be in his carryall. Even if it’s on his person, he won’t have a chance to pull it, let alone use it. Hodges hopes he never gets too old for excitement, but he has absolutely no interest in OK Corral shit.

Now he can hear the steady, swelling beat of the KingAir’s props as it taxies toward the building. ‘Better bring that Navigator around. Then …’

‘Hangar A, right. Good luck.’

Hodges nods his thanks. ‘You have a good day, sir.’