Garret had watched the exhibition along with the rest of the bar. “Can’t say as I blame you, mate.”
I’d been keeping track of the digital glow of the GPS, hoping Garret would wake up. Had a private little debate about it: Let the man sleep until we were closer to Panama City? Or make him take over the controls now?
Thoughtfulness won out. Let the man sleep. Yeah, I was paying him, but he was still doing me a gigantic favor. Plus, he’d be flying back to Cartagena alone and he’d need all the rest he could get.
I checked the GPS once again before I adjusted my headset, touched the transmit button and said, “Colon tower, this is Skylane four hundred Delta Hotel… I’m ten miles south-southeast at two-point-five with information Bravo.”
GPS meaning Global Positioning System. Information Bravo meaning I’d just checked the weather, was completely under control. At least, that was the impression I wanted to give them.
I waited for what seemed a long time before I repeated my previous transmission, adding, “Copy, Colon tower? Do you read?”
Nope, apparently not. Garret had set the radio frequency, but I checked it again: 122.8. That seemed about right. Checked the GPS again. Yep, now nine miles out of Colon and closing.
I touched the transmit button once more and said for anyone to hear, “This is Skylane four hundred Delta Hotel and I’ll be passing Colon to the south, bound for Panama City at two-point-five but climbing to four-point-five when I reach the mouth of the canal.” Said it more for any other aircraft in the area rather than the sleeping tower in the nasty little port town of Colon. Felt like adding that everyone should stay the hell out of my way, because I wasn’t much of a pilot and we were roaring into Panamanian airspace at 160 knots but at varying altitudes, and on a course that had more in common with a roller-coaster than with the normal patterns of a plane flown by someone who knew what he was doing.
Years ago, after my first required solo, our instructor had described my touchdown as, “More like a midair collision with earth than what you’d call a landing.”
But I could steer okay. In fact, I was enjoying it, because it took my mind off things I preferred not to think about.
What I preferred not to think about was becoming quite a long list…
Things I preferred not to think about: hearing Amanda’s voice through the telephone, but seeing her as a child again in that heartbreaking photo as she told me that the medical examiner had decided Frank had probably died from a heart attack that may have been catalyzed by slipping in the kitchen, cracking his head open on the counter.
Skipper, the young widow, was taking it pretty well. Maybe not so surprisingly well. She’d lost a soul mate, but gained three maybe four million in assets, not counting her beachfront home in Boca Grande.
Funeral was set for Monday.
Apparently, Frank had sprinted from the pool into the house-knocked the sliding door off its tracks, that’s how fast he’d been going. Maybe hurrying to answer the phone, she guessed. But that didn’t make sense because there was a phone near the pool. It was almost like he was in a panic. Running after something or running from something. How else could he generate that kind of force?
Part of what she said struck a chord: In a panic, running from something.
Scared to death, that’s what the medical examiner was suggesting. But by what?
I asked, “There were two weird red lines on Frank’s neck. Did the medical examiner say anything about that?”
No-and I could tell that Amanda did not enjoy having to again visualize her stepfather lying dead on the floor.
Something else was, she had a call in to the investigator Frank had hired, but no luck yet. She’d left a message.
I told her not to worry about it. I didn’t need the information anymore. Told her that I had a good lead on her mom and that what she’d probably better do was call the airlines as soon as we hung up and book a flight for tomorrow morning. The earlier she could get here, the better.
That got her excited. “You’re kidding me! Already? My dad was right, you really do have special talents.”
I wondered if my lighthearted enthusiasm sounded as contrived as it felt. “We’ll see,” I told her, and that as soon as I knew more, I’d call. Sometime late tonight, probably.
Just before we hung up, she’d said in a shy voice, “I miss you.”
A nice thing to hear, but she said it in a voice that told me she hoped to be more than a friend… which is probably why it hurt me so much.
Something else I preferred not to think about was Tuck. He’d made a big scene at Club Nautico when I told him I was leaving him behind. So drunk and drugged up that he could hardly speak, but still coherent enough to make himself the center of attention.
I’d told him that he’d find a way to embarrass me, and he had. Stood in the doorway of the marina weaving, trying to form words, and then-I couldn’t believe it-he began to weep.
I’d never even heard the man’s voice break before, but there he was sobbing, people in the bar hearing it all, but not understanding, when he yelled at me, “Why won’t you give me a chance to make it up to you! You don’t think it’s damn near drove me crazy all these years? She was my sister, goddamn it! My only sister!”
It was the first time he’d ever mentioned the death of my mother or had even acknowledged that it had happened. That’s how stoned he was. That’s how old and broken, filled with regret, he’d become.
I felt some sympathy, but not enough to take him along.
Something I didn’t mind remembering, though, was telephoning computer whiz Bernie Yager, timing it lucky enough so that he was at home.
After explaining to him where and what and why, I gave him the Internet address for Club Gamboa’s Web page. I’d copied it onto a little piece of paper before I left the Turk’s boat. To Bernie, I said, “I’ll be forever in your debt if you destroy the son-of-a-bitch. The sooner the better.”
Bernie had an evil little grin in his voice when he replied, “This whole terrible thing with Commander Richardson’s wife, it’s got the entire community talking.”
“It does?”
“They’re burning up the phone lines. Take it from me. And your fat friend? An hour from now, there won’t be a data bit left standing of his Web page. All that money he paid? Down the drain. And every time he rebuilds it, I’ll do it all over again.”
Yeah, I was enjoying the flight, feeling the little plane beneath me. Concentrate: light touch of the wheel, foot-rudder controls and a nicety of trim all keyed to engine speed. Kept my eyes moving from horizon to altimeter, checking over and over to make certain that all gauges were in the green.
We’d been at forty-five hundred feet when Garret dozed off, but I’d dropped down to the deck, twenty-five hundred, to get a better view.
What I saw beyond the flare of my own running lights was the Caribbean Sea glittering in the moonlight. Off to the left was a black hedge of coastline, no lights, no life at all. Mangroves. Had to be mangroves. I repeated my transmission twice more, no reply. Had the feeling that I was alone in the world, suspended in darkness above a revolving earth.
What worried me was, I knew there were military bases nearby. The Jungle Operations Training Base at Fort Sherman was still operating. I’d done some training there years ago: tropical billets on a 30,000-acre preserve of untouched rain forest. Magnificent. There were Forts Gulick and Davis, too, but they’d already been turned over to the Panamanians. I remembered enough from my flight training that such bases generally have restricted areas associated with them called MOAs, or Military Operation Areas.