Both Ends of the Night Page 6

  “Plus his statement that if he ‘survives this’ he’ll find them.”

  “Survives what?”

  “God knows.” Hy’s mouth turned down grimly.

  I ate a limp taquito, then sampled one of the chicken wings. Terrible. The pizza rolls were marginally better.

  He seemed disinclined to further analyze the situation, so I looked around the bar while washing down the junk food with wine. It was full of animated, casually dressed people, and I was willing to bet that many were pilots there for the air show.

  You can easily recognize pilots when they’re discussing flying, because they compulsively and often poetically talk with their hands. As I watched, a woman’s slender fingers described a barrel roll; at the next table, a man’s stubby hand executed a loop. Because they were in the bar with drinks in front of them, I knew none was a participant in tomorrow’s event; in fact, I doubted if most had mastered anything more complex than a spin. But they, like Hy and me, shared with the aerobatic professionals an ingrained love of flight, plus the knowledge that there is no greater thrill than perfectly performing a maneuver while in total control of your aircraft.

  I turned back to Hy. He was rolling his glass between his palms and staring into its depths. Thinking of Matty, I supposed. Perhaps remembering whatever had forged the bond between them. For a moment I hesitated, afraid of what I might find out if I interrupted his thoughts. Then I asked, “What?”

  He looked up, smiling. “I was thinking about what you said to Matty earlier: We’ll see that Zach stays safe. We’re asking her not to fly until we find out what’s going on.”

  “And?”

  “Seems like we’re working together more and more lately. There was that business down in Baja, and our trek back from the Caribbean, and Ricky’s mess last summer. Now there’s Matty and Zach.”

  “I didn’t mean to drag you in on my case. Don’t feel you have to—”

  “I don’t mind. Quite the opposite, in fact. We make a damn good team. Besides, I owe Matty.”

  “I thought she owed you. Why else would she have given me all those flying lessons at a cut rate?”

  “You ever think they might’ve been subsidized?”

  “By…? Oh, Ripinsky, you didn’t!”

  “Sure I did. I wanted you as my copilot.”

  I was torn between feeling angry and feeling pleased. On the one hand, he’d made me a charity case who’d been singled out by an anonymous benefactor. On the other, he’d cared enough to give me what I so badly wanted. “If I’d known—”

  “You’d’ve refused, and then I’d’ve had to teach you myself. And that would’ve been purely hellacious. One way or the other, though, I was bound and determined you’d become a pilot.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, I guess I figured if you came to love flying as much as I do, I wouldn’t lose you.”

  He normally revealed so little of his emotions, but when he did…

  I put my hand on his forearm and squeezed it. “Well, you wouldn’t’ve lost me—flying lessons or no flying lessons. But now I owe you. All these obligations: you, me, Matty.”

  “Yeah.” His gaze turned melancholy at my mention of her, and he drank off what was left of his beer. “Order us another round, would you? I’ll fetch some more of that wretched excuse for hors d’oeuvres.”

  I signaled the waitress and watched as Hy moved between the crowded tables: tall and lean and handsome in a rugged way that managed to turn a fair number of female heads between our booth and the buffet.

  Strange. We owned a home together. We shared a life that, while unconventional, suited us both. He loved me, I loved him—we’d finally gotten that sorted out and put into words. But while I’d thought he’d shared all his secrets with me, I was now finding there were still pockets of his past that remained off-limits.

  And it was unsettling to realize that one of those pockets contained memories of my friend Matty Wildress.

  Five

  The wide plain northwest of Sacramento where the airfield was located lay under a shroud of ground fog. Although the night had been crystal clear when Hy and I flew in, the cold earth had lowered the air’s temperature to the dew point, and now mist obscured both the flatlands and the far distant hills. Such fogs can burn off early, though, and at a little before nine I could already glimpse the sun’s bright halo.

  The airfield was small: a single runway, with one hangar and limited visitor tie-downs—a fact that had prompted us to leave the Citabria at Sacramento Metro and rent a car. Already bleacher seats were being erected and low barriers set up; two men struggled to unroll a red-white-and-blue striped tent, and food concession trucks were arriving. For a while I stood shivering and watching Hy and Matty move around her sleek yellow plane as they did the preflight, checking such things as the hydraulic brake lines, fuel tanks, prop, flaps, and ailerons. Matty was her old self this morning: clear-eyed and confident, long hair tied back with a cheery yellow scarf whose red sunburst pattern matched that on the plane’s wings. Hy, on the other hand, had been taciturn and preoccupied since our wake-up call at seven.

  By the time he’d opened the engine cowling and their heads were bent over the plane’s innards, I decided to go for a walk. Seeing them that way brought back the last time he and I had huddled over an engine in a similar manner; my one and only attempt at emergency aircraft repair had ended in failure that almost claimed him, Habiba, and me.

  By now the sun had burned a hole in the fog, and its appearance seemed to cheer the arriving pilots and mechanics. People called and waved to one another, greeted me pleasantly, and studiously avoided comment on the weather. Bad luck to talk about it. Even though fliers claim to understand its vagaries, there are few who don’t secretly believe that weather is controlled by a capricious and malevolent deity who is privy to our every utterance.

  I walked the length of the field, admiring the planes tied there. Each was beautiful in its own way: Pitts Specials, the tiny biplanes that for many years were the supreme U.S. manufactured aerobatic models; a lean, mean Extra 300S; a Czech-manufactured Zlin monoplane; several homebuilts; a red-and-white Chipmunk Special. I stopped to talk with the owner of a pre-World II Bücker Jungmeister, who claimed his blue biplane was the only type he’d trust for a completely reliable snap roll. He introduced me to a pair of wingwalkers, a husband-and-wife team whose specialty was synchronized movement atop a biplane in flight. In spite of being what I considered quite insane, the couple acted relaxed and normal as they told tales of the early wingwalkers and barnstorming pilots of the 1920s and ’30s. After a while I wandered on, admiring from afar a Belgian Stampe, another biplane, whose owner—judging from his scowl as he waxed its wings—was having a bad day.

  Finally, though, my thoughts turned to business. I went back to the privacy of the rental car, took out my phone, and called Mick’s condo. No answer, only the machine. When I called the office, Ted—who comes in on Saturdays and takes off when Neal’s bookshop is closed Monday mornings—informed me that my nephew had come in too.

  Mick sounded excessively cheerful for one whose woman friend was seeing someone else. Maybe Keim’s date had gone badly last night and she’d stopped by his condo to reassure him as to what a prize he was. But more likely his good spirits had to do with some triumph he’d scored with the computer.

  I asked, “So do you have anything for me?”

  “Some pretty strange stuff. I’ll give you the full rundown. I started with the Social Security numbers you gave me for Seabrook and his kid. They’re valid—or at least they don’t contain any of the obvious errors you see in fake ones, like a leading number nine or four zeros at the end. Next I checked to see what state they were issued in; three-eight-four and three-eight-six are for Michigan, which agrees with the birth certificates.”

  “What about the certificates? Are they valid, too?”

  He hesitated portentously—a sure sign he was on to something. “Well, vital stats off
ices aren’t open on the weekend, and the same goes for hospital records. But what I did was search Detroit area Information for phone numbers for the attending physicians. Nothing on the doc who delivered Seabrook—he’s probably dead—but there was a residence number for the guy who delivered Zach. When I called him, he told me he’s retired.”

  “Good work, Mick! Did he remember the Seabrooks?”

  “Very well. They were friends of his son. And he also remembers the blessed event.”

  Now the tone of his voice told me a surprise was in the offing. “And?” I asked impatiently. I hated it when Mick drew out the report of his findings this way—which was exactly why he did so.

  “And,” he said, “little Zachary was black.”

  “What!”

  “So were both his parents.”

  “Huh.” I was silent for a moment. “Well, I guess you know what we’ve got here.”

  “A case of faked identities.”

  “You say the doctor’s son was a friend of the Seabrooks. Does he know if they’re still in touch?”

  “They’re not. The Seabrooks left the area when Zach was around five months old. The son never heard from them again, and no other doctor ever requested the wife’s medical records.”

  “I’ll give you ten-to-one odds that the real Seabrooks are dead and have been for over ten years. And that the man claiming to be John Seabrook requested those certificates and built identities for himself and his son around them.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mick said. “Do birth certificates show what race you are?”

  I closed my eyes, trying to picture the Seabrooks’, but I couldn’t. “I don’t know, but even if they do, that can be altered.”

  “What about the Social Security numbers?”

  “The bogus John Seabrook probably applied for them after he got hold of the birth certificates.”

  “I’d sure like to get a look at his record of payments.”

  “They wouldn’t tell you anything; they’d only go back to when he moved to Los Alegres.”

  “Still…”

  “No, Mick. No. The Social Security Administration guards its records more closely than any other federal agency. Even the FBI can’t get a look without a court order.”

  “There’s got to be a way.”

  “Mick, I said no!”

  He heaved the martyred sigh of a true hacker. Months before he came to work for me, Mick had broken into the Pacific Palisades Board of Education’s computer and used certain information to line his own pockets—an act that had caused his parents to banish him from southern California and place him in my somewhat dubious protective custody. “Okay,” he said, “but you don’t mind if I make some other searches?”

  As recently as a year ago I would have demanded to know the exact nature of those searches, but now I simply gave him the go-ahead and said good-bye.

  Maybe, I thought, I’d given in because I knew I couldn’t stop Mick once he set his mind to something. Or maybe I’d been dealing with outfits like Renshaw and Kessell—who frequently strayed outside the boundaries of the law—too long to maintain my scruples. More likely, though, they were just plain eroding under constant battering from a world in which nobody really gave a damn.

  I didn’t want to tell Matty what Mick had turned up—at least not till she was done flying, and that wouldn’t be for another five hours. And I didn’t want to wait around anymore while she and Hy performed their extensive preflight—not when everything seemed secure here and there were leads to be worked elsewhere.

  Back on the field, I interrupted Hy’s scrutiny of the plane’s ignition system to ask for the key to the Citabria. He looked puzzled, told Matty he’d be right back, and walked with me to the parking lot. “Where’re you going?”

  “Los Alegres.” I took my .38 from my bag and handed it to him. “Here, in case you need it.”

  “But why Los Alegres?”

  “Something’s come up—nothing major, but it tells me I should get a move on questioning the people there. I can be back here in plenty of time to watch Matty fly.”

  He nodded and dug the key from his pocket.

  “How’s her plane?” I asked.

  “Clean, so far. And to make sure it stays that way, I’ve asked our Sacramento office to send a man over to help Matty’s mechanic babysit it till show time.”

  “How reliable does the mechanic seem?”

  “From the way he acts, I’d say he’d lay down his life for her.”

  “Let’s hope that won’t be necessary.”

  After yesterday’s departure in the Cessna, flying into Los Alegres in the Citabria was like coming home in a Porsche after leaving in a VW. I was running low on fuel, so I pulled over to the pumps, where I was greeted with a startled blink from Bob Cuda, one of the linemen. I shut it down, put the keys on the dash, and hopped out.

  “You’ve come a long way, baby,” Bob said as he attached the grounding wire to the exhaust pipe on the fuselage.

  “It’s borrowed.”

  “Somebody must like you a lot, to loan you this beauty.” He ran his hand over the high white wing, squinted up at the blue silhouette of an airborne gull on the tail section—the symbol for an environmental organization Hy had once headed and on whose board he still sat.

  I fetched the stepladder for Bob while he ran out the fuel line. When he climbed up and began filling the right tank, the strong crosswind—which I’d had to fight like hell on landing—blew the hood of his parka up over his longish gray hair.

  “Say, Bob, I’ve got a question for you. You still spend a lot of time over in the hangars with your mechanic buddies?”

  “Fair amount. Why?”

  “Matty’s noticed some stuff missing from her plane. Nothing valuable, but she asked me to look into it.”

  He pushed back the hood and frowned at me. “Why…? Oh, right, I forgot what line of work you’re in.”

  “You seen any strangers hanging around lately?”

  He removed the nozzle and replaced the tank cap, looking thoughtful. “Well, I don’t know everybody who flies in and out of here. Strangers’re always pulling up to the pumps.”

  “Any of them stay around, maybe visit Hangar B?”

  “Not that I recall. That hangar, a stranger would stand out; for sure somebody’d ask him what he was doing there.” He handed me the nozzle, climbed down, and dragged the ladder over to the left wing. I followed and returned the nozzle to him.

  “D’you know Matty’s boyfriend?” I asked.

  “John? Yeah, to say hello to.”

  “He spend much time out here?”

  “You see him around.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Waiting for Matty.”

  “He talk with anybody?”

  “Mostly he sits in the diner, nurses a beer, chats with whoever comes in. But a few weeks ago I did see him having a conversation with Gray Selby.”

  Now, that interested me. Gray Selby was one of the flight instructors, and no fan of Matty’s. A former fighter pilot from the Vietnam era, he had little use for women in the cockpit and even less for women who did aerobatics. While some other male instructors might be skeptical and adopt a wait-and-see attitude toward female students, Selby held to a hard sexist line and refused to teach them. While the others were the first to give credit where credit was due, Selby withheld it, no matter what a woman pilot’s accomplishments. Matty had always stood her ground with him, returning his caustic comments with humorous barbs. My way of dealing with Selby was to ignore him.

  Bob asked, “What’s this got to do with the stuff Matty’s missing?”

  “Nothing, really. I’m just curious about John; I haven’t met him yet.”

  That seemed to satisfy the lineman. He handed down the nozzle again, and I replaced it and the grounding wire while he wrote up my credit-card slip. After I’d signed it he followed me back to the Citabria and once more ran his hand over its wing, looking wistful.

  “One of these days,�
� I told him, “I’ll fly her up here and we’ll go for a ride.”

  “Thanks, I’d like that.”

  It would never happen. Bob was fifty-seven, had spent most of his adult life around the airport, loved aircraft more than anything on earth—and was deathly afraid to fly. He would have been mortified had he realized that everybody saw through his carefully concocted excuses for not accepting rides or taking lessons, so a tacit conspiracy of silence surrounded him. But just as caution makes for a good pilot, a fear of flying can make for a good lineman. Nobody who knew Bob felt compelled to check after fueling to make sure he’d properly tightened the tank caps.

  I left the Citabria in the visitors’ parking and walked over to the shop adjacent to the flight school and rental office, hoping to question the mechanics, but found it closed. The office was open and doing its usual brisk Saturday business, so I went inside and checked with the woman on the desk to see if Gray Selby was working today. The schedule showed he was due back from a lesson within the hour, at noon.

  While I waited, I sat in an easy chair near the door, chatting with old acquaintances as they passed through and slipping in an occasional question about John Seabrook and any strangers who might have visited Hangar B. Nobody could add anything to what Bob Cuda had already told me. Soon the room emptied as people headed for home, the diner, or the sky. By ten after twelve, Gray Selby still wasn’t back, so I picked up an issue of Flight Training magazine and tried to interest myself in an article on carburetor icing, a subject a pilot can’t know too much about, but I wasn’t able to focus and found myself going over paragraphs two and three times. Finally I set it aside.

  The comfortable room had scale models of aircraft hanging from its ceiling, and its walls were covered with Polaroid pictures of students, taken on the days they’d soloed. I got up and hunted for mine, found a younger version of myself hugging the strut of the old Cessna, long hair windblown, a smile as big as the world on my glowing face.