Everything was chill. Armstrong thought of reaching for the intercom, putting Dennison in the room and putting this man out of it. Henry didn’t move and neither did Armstrong.
Another three seconds of silence.
“Who are you?”
“What if planes crash and there ain’t no bomb?” said Henry McGee. “Could happen. That’d piss everyone off. Like them Caravelle planes in the fifties, kept crashing, people wouldn’t take them after a while. Wasn’t a bad plane but, what the hell, that’s the way it goes. You keep reminding people you run an unlucky airline and they start making jokes about you. Ain’t no way to stay in business, not for a middling carrier like yourself.”
“You’re threatening?”
“Sure. What the hell do you think this is about?”
Armstrong decided. He reached for the intercom at the moment Henry revealed his gun. It was a Walther PPK, a policeman’s gun, very neat and dark.
“Who are you?” Armstrong said for the third time. “How’d you get in here?”
“Had a card. Badge. ID. Usual shit. Your security stinks, I think you ought to fire your security man.”
Armstrong thought the same thing.
“Here’s the drill, Trevor honey. You don’t believe me. You gotta have a demonstration. It’s gonna come fairly soon. Alert security, all that. It helps to keep the boys on edge. But it don’t matter. We’re gonna make the first thing small, not involve a lot of people, but it’s gonna prove my point.”
“Which is?”
“Bombs are stupid. A lot better is something that does the same thing without looking like it’s the same thing.”
“You won’t get out of this building.”
“Sure I will.”
“What’s your name?”
“Felix Frankfurter. What the fuck do you care? The point is, you trade at seventy-seven. You don’t want to lose another six points on the New York exchange. You start smelling bad and the confidence is lost. You’re putting together a deal, a nice deal, you’re going to get out of this airline in a year with a lot of money by selling it to a greenmailer who’s gonna break it up in little pieces. And you’re gonna sell the airline down the river for a lot of money. I know that. Some of the inside guys know that. That takeover guy, that Carl Greengold, he’s gonna tear this airline a new asshole before it’s over. But what if EAA has a lot of accidents all of a sudden and suddenly, people find other ways to fly to Europe and the U.S. They ain’t gonna buy three-day-old fish. Or an airline that’s falling. Maybe Carl would lose interest if the stock started dropping real fast and he’d just back out. How much stock you got, Trevor? I bet you got a lot and I bet you’re in hock from tits to ass. Am I right?”
“Who sent you?”
“I sent myself. I even tie my own shoelaces now. Trevor, you got to understand what I’m trying to message. I want five million dollars. You can slush that to me out of your own pocket. I know you can. I know you have to. You’re gonna make what? A buck and a half when you sell this company down the toilet to the breakup artists?”
“You don’t know anything.”
“Shit, man. I know everything. And you know I know. The point is you don’t know exactly what I have in mind.”
“You’re crazy. I can’t be blackmailed.”
“Extortion. That’s the word you’re groping for.”
Henry took a step toward him and snapped the safety.
“Look at me, Trevor.”
“What do you want me to see?”
Henry smiled. Trevor was frozen dead still. The day had shattered around him. He thought he was embalmed.
“I want you to be afraid,” Henry said. “I know you’re a little afraid now but I want you to be big afraid. The only thing is gonna make you afraid is losing all that money when you could make a little contribution to the widows’ and orphans’ fund and be left alone.”
“Would I be left alone?”
“Sure. I don’t want to play this game more than once.”
“Why me?”
“Luck.” He smiled. “Was reading about that crash of Flight One forty-seven when I was striking a deal. I figured: Why not you? Did my homework and you were elected prom queen.”
“What are you going to do?”
Henry said, “I’m going to scare the living shit out of you, Trevor.”
20
Devereaux had truly frightened Dr. Krueger and he did as he was told for a long time.
Rita Macklin was brought into the small reception foyer of the sanitarium by the director, a man who guided her by the arm as if she might be old or merely crazy. She wore a plain gray dress and a cloth coat and flat shoes. Her hair was loose and wild about her shoulders. She wore no makeup. Her eyes were dull and her hands were small and they had grown old in the past month. She trembled from time to time, as though a passing memory had frightened her.
She stared at Devereaux for a long moment as though he might be someone she had known.
Dr. Krueger glanced at Devereaux in that moment of first meeting. “You see?”
Devereaux saw.
“I am trying to help her,” Dr. Krueger said.
“Rita,” Devereaux said. He touched her arm. The director of the sanitarium stood behind Krueger, a perpetual smile on his face. He had the sincere manner of an undertaker. He was accustomed to dealing with people in grief.
“Do you see?” Dr. Krueger said, almost in triumph. It was better than he had hoped for.
“Dev,” she said. “Where have you been?” She stood apart from him, her green eyes growing sad with tears. “Where have you been? Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“The night after you were shot, I came to see you; I was hit. They kept me in a hospital room without a telephone. They wouldn’t let me call you.”
“You look different.” Sadness turned down her mouth. “You look older. Look at me, Dev. Look at what’s happened to me. I was dying and I called you and you never came.”
“I’ll never leave you.”
“Is that true?” And she began to smile. “Until the next time. When you have to leave me. And be about your uncle’s business. The next time and the time after that time. I always believe you.”
“I never told you before,” he said. “I’m telling you now.”
“Words lie, you said.”
“I love you, Rita,” Devereaux said.
She was crying and everyone saw it and no one moved. Tears fell down her pale, drawn cheeks. She resembled a photograph of a refugee, perhaps taken at the time of a recent war, the face hollow and drained and the eyes staring and unbelieving that the body was not yet dead. Numbed by starvation or grief or loss of hope.
Krueger said, “Do you see? She can’t be released.”
She looked at Krueger and blinked against her tears. She reached for his hand and held it. He patted her shoulder and she went to him and rested her head against him.
Devereaux said, “We’re going now.”
“I don’t think so,” Dr. Krueger said. “Do you want to go, Rita?”
Rita Macklin stopped and looked up at the kind face of Dr. Krueger. Did she want to leave? Where was she exactly? Was this still the hospital? She looked at Dr. Krueger’s face to see what the answer was. Dr. Krueger shook his head. She saw what the answer was. She looked at Devereaux and saw this different man, a man of ashes, in pain, old around the eyes. Or was she staring at herself in a mirror? What was she exactly? Sometimes she was certain she was someone else.