“There’s a woman picking him up. Sue Molaynen, or something like that.”
After a moment Charlie said, “ Suomalainen? ”
“Yeah, you know her?”
“Jake, a suomalainen is a citizen of Suomi, or what we call Finland.”
Oh. Where does he learn this stuff? I felt like I was being sent into a game, and I didn’t know the plays. It was starting to overwhelm me.
“Look, Charlie, if anything happens to me, you know that graphite spinning rod of mine you’ve been admiring for a long-”
“Hush! Quaere verum. Seek the truth and do what you have to do. When this is over, Jake, we’ll go fishing together.”
I could have gone home. Charlie would have given me a ride, or I could have taken a cab. But I didn’t go. I said good-bye to Charlie, took the elevator back to the terminal, ducked out an “Airline Personnel Only” door, and limped across the tarmac, weaving between a 727 about to taxi out, and a DC-9 easing up to the jetway. A guy with two flashlights and protective eargear gave me a dirty look, but I kept going. The door was open at the foot of Concourse E, and I went up the stairs.
I put some coins into a machine and bought the local newspaper. I sat down at a departure gate and buried my head in the sports section. Baseball and golf. What a lousy time of year. The pro football draft was history, but the league’s summer camps hadn’t opened yet. Not a word about the Dolphins. Sports was so boring this time of year, I might be forced to read the business section. Why not? I had lots of time.
The airport is a sort of high-tech prison with air-conditioning and souvenir stands. It has its amenities, a decent raw bar in the terminal, countless taverns and ice cream stands, rest rooms and telephones. You can buy T-shirts with funny slogans as gag gifts or battery-operated toys that will never work at home. The airport is designed to make agonizing waits, if not pleasant, at least tolerable, while relieving you of the contents of your wallet. It is a modern way station between anywhere and home.
I wasn’t leaving town, and I wasn’t going home. The egress road from the airport is one-way headed east. A mile from the terminal, you can swing south onto LeJeune and head into Coral Gables, or take the expressway to Miami Beach. Go west, and you’re aiming for the Everglades. Take LeJeune north, and you’ll hit Hialeah. But it would only require one police car at the ramp to stop every car leaving the airport. I wasn’t leaving, not for a while. I wasn’t giving Foley a chance to come up with another stunt to get me out of the way.
Even if I made it out of here and buried myself somewhere, I’d have to come back to the airport tomorrow, anyway. As in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Purloined Letter,” maybe the best hiding spot is the most visible one.
Over the loudspeaker, a man named Milligan was being paged, and it gave me an idea. I had all night to think about it. So I settled back into the molded plastic chair by a Delta Air Lines gate and let my mind drift. I closed my eyes and wondered, first, what a man named Kharchenko was up to, and second, what the son of a bitch looked like.
T he gun was pointed at my chest. A little gun that could punch little holes straight through my chest and out my back. Blood dripped onto the butt from the big man’s torn thumb. Silver, luminous smoke drifted toward the ceiling.
No one said a word. Not the beefy, beered-up lout with the gun. Not the open-mouthed patrons who drifted in a semicircle around us, eyes glistening with excitement. Not the young woman whose honor I defended and who now backed away, her shoes scraping the floor.
And not me. Jake Lassiter, reserve linebacker and second-string dragonslayer, was too scared to talk. Big Mouth was sneering, baring his teeth, daring me to make a move.
I didn’t.
Petrified. Each foot weighed a ton. My breathing was labored, my chest constricted. On the jukebox, the Doobie Brothers were singing, but no one was listening.
Finally, Big Mouth said something, the sounds dense and ponderous like a tape recording played a speed too slow. I strained to hear, the words echoing. “Who… who’s… gonna help you now, asshole?”
I tried to answer but was mute. I tried to move but was frozen. Then I saw him, silent as a shadow, moving toward the big man. Was he real or did I conjure him up? I hadn’t seen him in the crowded bar, but he’d seen me, and now, there he was, a guardian angel without wings or halo.
But with a knife.
Francisco Crespo.
For a second I lost sight of him, but then he materialized again a step behind and just to the left of Big Mouth. As the man’s fat thumb pulled back the hammer of his gun, I heard the cl-ick, and simultaneously, Crespo flicked his wrist, and a six-inch steel blade flashed out of a black onyx handle. Big Mouth heard the blade whipping into place, and his eyes widening, he wheeled to his left, the gun swiveling toward Crespo.
Crespo drove his hand forward, straight and hard, with no wasted motion. The blade struck between the sixth and seventh ribs and plunged straight into the man’s heart. His mouth opened, a startled look, and his eyes shifted from Crespo, to me, to the blade jammed in his chest. Crespo pulled out the knife with a wet, sucking plop, then watched the man crumple to the floor.
No longer an apparition, Crespo was a small, wiry agent of doom, his face devoid of expression. He leaned over, wiped the knife on the man’s shirt, straightened, folded the blade into its handle, nodded to me, and walked out. The bar patrons scattered as he left.
Then I saw it again, just as always, this time at dreamscape speed, the gun pointing at me, Crespo appearing in the crowd, and I heard the sounds again, the man’s raspy voice, the wailing jukebox, the cl-ick of the hammer, the snap of the blade, and the plop of punctured tissue. Over and over, slower and slower, until I chased the foggy ribbons out of my head and shook myself awake, realizing where I was and how long ago it had been.
Now I checked my watch. Three-thirty A.M. I stood and stretched. My shirt was clammy, my back stiff. I curled up again in the molded plastic chair created by a noted designer who was a distant cousin of the Marquis de Sade. As I groped for sleep that eluded me, the rest of it emerged from deeply etched memory.
Two patrolmen were there in seven minutes, the homicide detective in another twenty. Everyone in the bar suffered from either myopia or amnesia. Except me, and the best I could do was recollect a six-foot-five, husky Anglo with a knife, a guy with short red hair and a flag tattoo. Looked like a marine, I told the cops.
T he day began with the roar of floor polishers moving down the deserted concourse. My head was filled with sand and my back needed half a dozen spinal twists to work out the crinks and knots. I bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a ninety-five-cent razor in the sundries shop, rinsed my face with cold water, and went to a counter to borrow the Official Airline Guide, international edition. Sure enough, a Finnair flight would arrive at JFK nonstop from Helsinki just after noon. I switched books to the national edition and tried to figure the connecting flight.
Easy. American Airlines had a two o’clock nonstop, JFK to Miami. Enough time to clear customs in New York and climb aboard. The clincher. Finnair and American shared terminal space. No need to hop the bus and go round the horn from terminal to terminal.
I had the day to kill, so I bought a couple magazines, a Travis McGee paperback, and a bag of jelly beans. When a Metro policeman eyed me at midday, I sat still until he passed, then changed concourses.
The American flight from JFK was an hour late. The plane was supposed to do a turnaround, and the gate area was crowded with angry folks who couldn’t board because the aircraft wasn’t here yet. Some businessmen in suits, ties loosened, already dreading yet another delay. Tourists with bawling children going home, carry-ons stuffed with presents and mementos. A blond boy of about seven was playing with one of those remote-control cars, zooming it across the tile, banging into walls, getting the hang of the steering. Nearby, a few tourists lingered at the magazine stand. A young couple shared one chair. Newlyweds, probably, or maybe they always groped each other at airport gates.