“I just got my daughter one of those books of 3D computer pictures,” Bill Evans said. “They’re terrific. Have you seen them?”
I said I hadn’t.
“Absolutely terrific,” he said. “You hold the page here against your nose and then, with your eyes completely unfocused, you slowly move the picture out to arm’s length.” He demonstrated with the menu. “An absolutely different 3D image emerges from the page. Fantastic.”
“Sounds like it,” I said.
“You seem pretty down,” said Evans. “The arm, I suppose.”
“That’s part of it.”
“And not finding out what happened to Nancy Canales.”
“Oh, I know what happened to her,” I said. “She’s dead.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“Yes, I can. She was killed because the American Eagles learned she was an FBI plant. She was working undercover, and I think you were the one handling her. You here and Serpe up in Albuquerque.”
He just looked at me, all the usual joviality gone. I saw a face — cold, calculating — I’d never seen before. Our drinks arrived, and to my surprise Evans set his to one side.
“There’s no proof of that,” he said. “You’re just speculating.”
“I don’t need proof. Looking at you right now is proof enough. And if I’m right, everything suddenly makes perfect sense. How did they find out about her?”
He stared at me expressionlessly, then said, “The nearest we can figure, someone saw her with Serpe. Someone who knew who Serpe was.”
“You didn’t tell the police anything.”
“It wouldn’t have served any purpose.”
“No — and you guys don’t like bad publicity. How long had she been working for you?”
“From the beginning. She’s been an estadista for years.”
“Well, I’m sure you can replace her,” I said coldly.
“The bitch of it is, we could have had them,” Evans said. “We were that close—” he held his thumb and index finger millimeters apart. He had chubby hands. “And then it had to get screwed up.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame,” I said. “You know, you guys are good. You really had me taken in.”
He half smiled sheepishly; for a second he was the familiar comic in the crewcut. “We thought you might help us out,” he said.
The half smile disgusted me more than anything else. I had to leave. I had to make a call that I dreaded to the daughter of Nancy Canales.
Fog
by Stephen Wasylyk
The Saturday morning fog hung so thick and heavy and wet Howell Dunne felt he could wave a hand and come up with a fistful of water. That was the way things were going lately, he thought. Nothing worked out right.
He turned from the window and walked through the emptiness of the house to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sipped at the black, heavy flavor. For the hundredth time he told himself she had no right to leave, none at all. Something might have been worked out. But then maybe not. She had always been fond of money, and since the business had failed, he’d had little enough of that.
Which was why he had to get rid of the plane. Owning your own aircraft and flying every weekend was a hobby he could no longer afford.
The fog brushed the kitchen window with a million little droplets that distorted the view of the back yard.
Too bad. He had intended to take the plane up this morning for one last flight before turning it over to Westmont, who’d had his eye on it for a long time. There were few AT-6’s left these days, and one in excellent condition like his was worth a good price. Enough to five on for a few months.
He poured the coffee down the drain. To hell with it. He’d go out to the airfield anyway, even though there would be no one there except Marco Fleming. It would be better than sitting around here all morning.
Forty minutes later he pulled up before the small cinder block operations building at the corner of the L-shaped grass field. Extending down the line away from the building, a twin row of planes of various configurations loomed wetly shining and dark, the far end fading into the mist, their pi-lot-owners still sensibly at home in bed.
As he stepped into the dry warmth of the operations office, Marco, feet up on the desk and hands folded over his ample stomach, opened one eye, closed it again, and grunted. “I have to be here, since I own the damned place. You should be at home asleep.”
“I am a seeker of peace and quiet, Marco. Rare commodities these days. You can get them at five thousand feet at dawn or in this hut on a foggy morning. Is the forecast as bad as I think?”
Marco indicated the tireless red light endlessly running across the face of the scanner he kept tuned to aircraft frequencies. “The whole area is closed in.” He swung his feet to the floor. “Heard you sold your bird to Westmont.”
“No choice. Need the money.”
“I thought you broke even when you closed up the business.”
“Came out even. There’s a difference. Almost every cent I had went to pay off the creditors. My wife took what I had left.”
Marco nodded. “Happens all the time.” He hesitated. “Listen, Howell. You were one of the first to back me when I opened up, and you brought your friends, so about that plane of yours. I’d be willing to go along with you for a while on the parking fee and even for a tankful of gas now and then if you want to hold on to it.”
Dunne nodded. “I appreciate that, but all I’d be doing is postponing the inevitable. Hoped to take it up one last time this morning, but the fog killed that idea. Westmont will be here at noon to sign the papers. Think I’ll just check it over before he gets here.”
Between the parked planes the grass was wet, the sod spongy beneath his feet. The stillness was as heavy as the fog, the only sound the whisper of his footsteps. He passed the parked planes slowly. The fog, the winged shapes, the stillness blended to return him to similar days on an airfield in England during World War II.
I suppose you never shake that feeling, no matter how many years pass, he thought wryly.
A small crackling sound made him turn and peer into the fog. He saw nothing. He waited. The sound wasn’t repeated.
He shrugged. A morning like this was ideal for exercising your imagination.
He swung up on the wing of his plane, unlocked the canopy, removed the records he’d need to complete the deal with Westmont, and leaped to the ground, walking around the plane slowly and trailing his fingers through the jewellike condensation on the metal skin. He was reluctant to part with it. In its own way losing the plane meant more to him than losing his wife. Flying had always been important, the kind of flying that took him into the sky alone to do as he pleased and to go where he pleased, a freedom that could never be explained to those who had never experienced it and doesn’t have to be to those who have.
No matter what his future financial condition, it was always possible for him to remarry, but it wasn’t likely that he could ever again afford a plane like this and its upkeep. Giving it up meant a radical change in the way he lived, the loss of something that was an integral part of him.
As he tested the tie-downs, a small sound made him glance back at the mist-hidden operations building. He saw nothing. Maybe someone else was crazy enough to come out this early.
He gave the plane a final pat and went back to the building. He stepped through the door, his muscles stiffening in shock.
Marco lay crumpled in a corner, one hand held to a temple that oozed a rivulet of blood, his mouth open and panic in his eyes.
And then a hard hand between Dunne’s shoulder blades propelled him to Marco’s side, slamming him into the wall. He spun angrily and froze, fear locking his heart and tingling down his spine.