“So they didn’t make the fornication legal, did they? Or you wouldn’t need me to find that wonderful diamond. Am I right?”
“Partly right. John Clarke got on Trans World Airlines Flight 2 at Los Angeles International Airport. Flight 2 took off at nine A.M. en route to Kansas City, then on to New York. The potential bride claims that she waited for him at the airport. Waited and waited and waited, with a roomful of other nervous people. Finally, the TWA folks announced the plane was missing. Advised them to leave a telephone number at the desk and go home and wait in comfort. Promised to call when the plane was located.”
“Let’s see,” Chandler said. “Was that about when hijacking airplanes was very popular? Did the plane turn up in Cuba?”
“The crash was in June 1956. Way too early for Castro and all that.”
“Oh.”
“It was a Lockheed Super Constellation. You old enough to remember them? Four prop engines and a tail with three rudders sticking up. A day later they spotted that funny-looking tail in Arizona, down in the Grand Canyon, and what was left of the cabin upstream a quarter mile or so. And the rest of it scattered here and there up and down the cliffs.”
“So you’re telling me Clarke was killed then, I guess, but the diamond not found on his body? Is that it? What happened to the Constellation? Struck by lightning or what?”
“Struck by a United Airlines Douglas DC7. That one had left Los Angeles about five minutes earlier, both of them flying at about twenty-one thousand feet, both headed to the East Coast. Storms all around. Nobody knows how it happened, but the investigators guess one of the pilots, maybe both of them, swerved to give the passengers a better look at the canyon. Anyway, a hundred twenty-eight people were killed. Everybody aboard the planes. Worst airline disaster in history up to that time. Bodies scattered up and down the cliffs, all torn up, some of them burned. The planes weren’t located until the next day. Then they couldn’t get the old-fashioned copters they had then into the canyon due to the canyon winds. Some medics were parachuted down, I’m told, and then they got some mountain climbers to help.”
Plymale stopped, peered at Chandler. “You never heard about this?”
“It was old news before I was born.”
“Well, back then it was the biggest story of the year.” Plymale chuckled. “Quite a show. Not many people flew those days. Took trains. And flying was expensive. One of the planes was mostly hauling serious big shots. A vice president of General Motors, for example, an ex-ambassador, CEO of another Fortune Five Hundred corporation, top level of the social class. Not just the tourist-ticket trash you see now. Very important families involved. One of them even hired some Swiss mountain climbers and had them flown over to see if his daughter’s body could be found. A week later they were still hunting pieces of the planes and trying to match body chunks. Hauled them out in bags, in bits and pieces.”
Plymale sipped. Chandler waited. Now the old bastard would finally get to the diamond. Probably he wasn’t going to ask any more about that homicidal mistake Chandler had made in Portland. Probably it was forgotten now. Even by that homicide detective. A cold, cold case. He sipped his drink. Enjoyed the breeze. Someday he’d be able to afford this lifestyle without putting up with this arrogant treatment.
“Luggage raining down, too,” Plymale said. “Suitcases, handbags, those little pet-carrier cages. They found one with a bulldog in it. One with a parrot. Scattering down like a sort of weird hailstorm.”
Plymale laughed, enjoying this. “Imagine that. I’d like to have seen it.”
“Clarke, too?”
“What?”
“Did John Clarke fall, too?”
“Now, that’s a dumb question,” Plymale said. “Everybody fell. Pilots, copilots, stewardesses, men, women, children, at least two babies. Some still in the planes, some doing a free fall.”
“Did he have the diamond he was bringing for his bride?”
“Probably. He said he was bringing it. He was on the plane when it left LAX. No way to get off.” He rattled what was left of the ice in his drink, looked at the glass, shook his head.
The old bastard is teasing me, Chandler thought. To hell with him. To hell with this.
“Look,” Chandler said. “I want to know about this job you brought me down here to tell me about. I guess you want me to find something. Maybe John Clarke is still alive. Maybe he didn’t get on that plane. Maybe you want me to find what’s left of his body if he was on it. Or am I looking for that remarkable diamond he was bringing his lady?”
“You’re not very good at guessing,” Plymale said. “Nor sitting still and listening.”
“Nor playing games, either,” Chandler said. “What do you want me to do? And what do I get out of it?”
“I want you to find John Clarke’s left arm,” Plymale said, and laughed. “How about that? And if you don’t find it, I want you to make damn sure nobody else finds it.”
Chandler considered this. He glanced at Plymale, who was grinning at him. He finished his drink, put on his sandals, pushed himself out of the chair, and looked down at Plymale.
Plymale’s grin went away. “If you walk off now, you’ll have been wasting my time and my money,” the old man said. “I’ll have to find somebody else to do this. You’ll be back doing your nickel-and-dime skip-tracing jobs. Chasing after the bond jumpers. And you’ll be wondering what you missed.”
“Okay,” Chandler said. “Then tell me.”
“Clarke’s left arm seems to have been torn off. The wing of one of those planes cut through the passenger section of the other one. Maybe that did it. Or maybe when he was thrown out of the plane in the collision. Maybe when his body tumbled down a cliff.” Plymale shrugged. “Doesn’t matter how. What matters is that it was his left arm, because Clarke had one of those security cases attached to his left wrist. Handcuffed, sort of. Like the devices State Department couriers used to carry secret stuff. Jewelry dealers and some big-currency brokers used to use ’em, too. Lock them on, lock the case, nobody would have the second key but the person who was getting the delivery.”
“Sure,” Chandler said.
“Anyway, sometime after the disaster, a fellow working at the canyon bottom saw part of the arm—hand, wrist, forearm, pretty much all of it, I think it was. It was sticking out of a pile of driftwood and trash at one of those Colorado River waterfalls. He saw the forearm with the handcuff on it and the box attached to a chain. He even saw a tattoo on the bicep. Claimed he did, anyway. But he couldn’t get to it. Went back to the place the next day with some help, but the river had risen and swept away the flotsam. And the arm with it, or so we presume. Who knows? Could be somebody else came along and fished it out.”
“And got the diamond case?”
Plymale shook his head. “Maybe. Anyway, that’s the end of that phase of the story.”
“Why the security case?” Chandler asked. “He could have carried that diamond ring for his bride in his pocket.”
“Clarke was managing part of his old man’s jewelry business. He’d gone to the coast to bring back a shipment of ‘special-cut’ diamonds for the rich end of his trade. They were the very best, blue-white, perfect gems, specially cut for the cream of the elite. I think there was seventy-something of them listed in the claim, all at least two and a half carats. The airline insurance company paid its hundred-thousand maximum limit for the loss. People in the business guess they’d have been worth a hundred times that, even at prices then. Today, who knows. Smallest one would probably sell for more than twenty thousand. Say double that for an average, and then multiply it by about seventy-five. Many multiple millions.”
Chandler was no longer bored. Or tired.
“And they were never recovered?”
“Not legally, anyway. Not reported and returned to owner. That’s the problem,” Plymale said. “Maybe they have been. Maybe we’re trying to find who has them now.”