“I’ve got strict fecking instructions,” he says, “to take you to the West Village. You’re moving up in the world.”
“Strict instructions from who?” Scott wants to know.
“A new friend,” says Magnus. “That’s all I can say at this moment.”
“Pull over,” Scott tells him in a hard voice.
Magnus gives Scott a double eyebrow lift, smiles.
Scott reaches for his door handle.
“Chill, boyo,” says Magnus, swerving slightly. “I can see you’re in no mood for mystery.”
“Just tell me where we’re going?”
“Leslie’s,” says Magnus.
“Who’s Leslie?”
“Geez, did you crack your head in the crash? Leslie Mueller? The Mueller Gallery?”
Scott is at a loss.
“Why would we go to the Mueller Gallery?”
“Not the gallery, you tosser. Her house. She’s a billionaire, yeah? Daughter of that tech geezer who made that gizmo in the ’nineties. Well, after you called me I maybe shot my mouth off a bit about how I was coming to get you and how you and me were gonna hit the town, get some ladies’ numbers — you being a shit-you-not hero and all — and I guess she heard, ’cause she called me. Says she saw what you did on the news. Says her door is open. She’s got a guest suite on the third floor.”
“No.”
“Don’t be stupid, amigo. This is Leslie Mueller. This is the difference between selling a painting for three thousand dollars and selling one for three hundred thousand. Or three million.”
“No.”
“Perfect. I hear you. But think about my career for a minute. This is Leslie fucking Mueller. My last show was at a crab shack in Cleveland. At least let’s go for dinner, let her rub up against that giant hero boner of yours, commission a few pieces. Maybe throw in a good word for your boyo. Then we make excuses.”
Scott turns to look out the window. In the car next to them a couple is arguing, a man and woman in their twenties, dressed for work. The man is behind the wheel, but he isn’t looking at the road. His head is turned and he is waving one hand angrily. In response, the woman holds an open lipstick, half applied, and jabs it in the man’s direction, her face lemoned with distaste. Looking at them, Scott has a sudden flash of memory. He is back on the flight, seat belt on. Up front, at the open cockpit door, the young flight attendant — what was her name? — is arguing with one of the pilots. Her back is to Scott, but the pilot’s face is visible over her shoulder. It is ugly and dark, and as Scott watches the pilot grabs the girl’s arm tightly. She pulls away.
In the memory, Scott feels the seat belt clasp in his hand. His feet are flat under him, his quads tensed as if he is about to stand. Why? To go to her aid?
It comes in a flash and then it’s gone. An image that could be from a movie, but feels like his life. Did that happen? Was there some kind of fight?
In the next lane the furious driver turns and spits out the window, but the window is up. A frothy rope of spit runs down the curved glass, and then Magnus speeds up and the couple is gone.
Scott sees a gas station ahead.
“Can you pull in here?” Scott asks. “I want to get a pack of gum.”
Magnus digs around in the center console.
“I’ve got some Juicy Fruit somewhere.”
“Something mint,” Scott says. “Just pull over.”
Magnus turns in without signaling, parks around the side.
“I’ll just be a second,” Scott tells him.
“Get me a Coke.”
Scott realizes he’s wearing scrubs.
“Lend me a twenty,” he says.
Magnus thinks about this.
“Okay, but promise we’re going to Mueller’s. I bet she’s got scotch in her cabinets that was bottled before the fecking Titanic.”
Scott looks him in the eye.
“Promise.”
Magnus pulls a crumpled bill from his pocket.
“And some chips,” he says.
Scott closes the passenger door. He is wearing disposable flip-flops.
“Be right back,” he says, and walks into the gas station convenience store. There is a heavyset woman behind the counter.
“Back door?” Scott asks her.
She points.
Scott walks down a short hall, past the restrooms. He pushes open a heavy fire door and stands squinting in the sun. There is a chain-link fence a few feet away, and behind that the start of a residential neighborhood. Scott puts the twenty in his front pocket. He tries to climb the fence one-handed, but the sling gets in the way so he ditches it. A few moments later he is on the other side, walking through a vacant lot, his flip-flops slapping against his heels. It is late August, and the air is thick and broiled. He pictures Magnus behind the wheel. He will have turned on the radio, found an oldies station. Right now he’s probably singing along with Queen, arching his neck on the high notes.
Around Scott, the neighborhood is lower-class, cars on blocks in driveways, aboveground pools sloshing in backyards. He is a man in hospital scrubs and flip-flops walking through the midday heat. A mental patient for all anybody knows.
Thirty minutes later he finds a fried chicken joint, goes inside. It’s just a counter and stove with a couple of chairs in front.
“You got a phone I could use?” he asks the Dominican guy behind the counter.
“Gotta order something,” the guy tells him.
Scott orders a bucket of thighs and a ginger ale. The clerk points to a phone on the wall in the kitchen. Scott takes a business card from his pocket and dials. A man answers on the second ring.
“NTSB.”
“Gus Franklin, please,” says Scott.
“Speaking.”
“It’s Scott Burroughs. From the hospital.”
“Mr. Burroughs, how are you?”
“Fine. Look. I’m — I want to help — with the search. The rescue. Whatever.”
There is silence on the other end of the line.
“I’m told you checked out of the hospital,” says Gus, “somehow without being seen by the press.”
Scott thinks about this.
“I dressed up like a doctor,” he says, “and went out the back door.”
Gus laughs.
“Very clever. Listen. I’ve got divers in the water searching for the fuselage, but it’s slow going, and this is a high-profile case. Is there anything you can tell us, anything else you can remember about the crash, what happened before?”
“It’s coming back,” Scott tells him. “Still just fragments, but — let me help with the search. Maybe being out there — maybe it’ll shake something loose.”
Gus thinks about this.
“Where are you?”
“Well,” says Scott, “let me ask you this — how do you feel about chicken thighs?”
Chapter 10. Painting #1
The first thing that catches your eye is the light, or rather two lights angled toward a single focal point, becoming a figure-eight flare at the center of the canvas. It is big, this painting, eight feet long and five feet high, the once white tarpaulin transformed into a smoky gray glitter. Or maybe what you see first is calamity, two dark rectangles slicing the frame, jackknifed, their metallic skeletons glowing in the moonlight. There are flames on the edge of the picture, as if the story doesn’t end just because the painting stops, and people who view the image have been known to walk to the far edges looking for more information, microscoping the framing wood for even a hint of added drama.
The lights that flare out the center of the image are the headlights of an Amtrak passenger train, its caboose having come to rest almost perpendicular to the twisted iron track that bends and waves below it. The first passenger car has disconnected from the caboose and now makes the trunk of a T, having maintained its forward momentum and smashed the engine dead center, bending its bread-box contours into a vague V.