Both Ends of the Night Page 8

  “It’s called an avalanche.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  “Can be.”

  The biplane blended the snap roll into a smooth descent down the back of the loop.

  “Let’s give Joe a big hand, folks!”

  Beside me, the young woman who had saved our place said to her much older male companion, “Why would anybody want to do that?”

  “Because it’s fun, darlin’.”

  I tipped my head back and looked up at Hy. His eyes met mine. Yes and no, they said. I nodded.

  Aerobatics is about a lot of things, and fun is only one of them. It’s also about discipline and self-sacrifice, long hours spent practicing, and endless self-evaluation. It’s about control and power: making your aircraft do exactly what you want it to do. It’s about sheer defiance of nature: that’s gravity and human frailty you’re thumbing your nose at. It’s about overcoming fear and feeling alive and pushing your limits.

  And finally, on the professional level, it’s about showmanship. The pilots who fly aerobatically for money and glory are aviation’s rock-and-rollers. But instead of seeing their names in neon lights, they write their accomplishments in smoke against the sky.

  The biplane shot upward in a vertical climb, dived straight back down, and recovered with split-second timing. As the crowd cheered, it climbed out and sedately entered the landing pattern. But on final, the pilot waggled its wings—waving exuberantly at the spectators. They greeted its touchdown with roars of approval.

  I peered across the field at Matty’s yellow plane; it looked small and vulnerable as it waited at the hold line. The loudspeaker system screeched and groaned.

  “… Matty Wildress, who captured second place last September in the U.S. Aerobatic Championship. Matty’s flying a customized Stirling Silver Star—three hundred and sixty horsepower, with a roll rate of three hundred degrees per second. This Arkansas-manufactured monoplane is all metal…”

  I tuned out the commentator’s voice as Matty turned onto the runway. Full power, fast ground run, and back on the stick for a smooth climb-out.

  She began her routine with a basic loop; she was known for playing games with her audience by starting out with deceptively simple maneuvers and then surprising them. In my mind I followed her movements: back on the stick; full throttle as the Star pulled up through the vertical; pressure on the stick relaxed as she went upside down over the top; reduced throttle on the back side of the loop. Return to straight and level.

  Easy to imagine, but I’d performed clumsy loops at sixty-five hundred feet, and she performed an elegant one at only a few hundred.

  “Kind of a pedestrian beginning,” the man next to us commented.

  Again Hy and I exchanged glances: Watch this.

  The Star shot upward, smoke spewing from beneath its fuselage. Spun up and up—a ballet dancer performing a pirouette. Then down in a vertical dive. Recovery, perhaps a hundred feet off the runway. The announcer exclaimed, the crowd cheered.

  A high spiral next, leaving a corkscrew smoke trail. Then a slow horizontal roll, more difficult to maintain than a fast one. A high loop, followed by a series of joyous turns that wore S’s against the sky.

  “God, she’s good!” I exclaimed.

  She was soaring upside down now. The red sunburst pattern on the wings sparkled in the afternoon light. The Star reached mid-field, then tumbled forward, tail over nose. Tumbled again and again.

  “Wonderful!” the man next to us said. The crowd evidently thought so too.

  I grabbed Hy’s arm. “What’s that?”

  “Lomcevak. Czech word meaning ‘imbalance,’ most often applied to overimbibers of slivovitz. There’re infinite variations on it; it’s never done exactly the same way twice. High negative G’s, and she handled them beautifully.”

  “There it is, folks—the ultimate aerobatic maneuver! Give Matty a big hand. You’re looking at the next U.S. champion. A couple more years, and she’ll hold the world title.”

  Again Matty put the Star into a loop, higher up this time.

  I asked Hy, “What d’you suppose she’ll do for a finale?”

  “Can’t imagine. She—What the hell… !”

  The Star was on the back side of a low loop now—diving much too fast.

  “Christ,” Hy exclaimed, “she’s not easing off on the throttle!”

  I grabbed the top rail of the barricade. Pulled back with my right hand, as if I could control the throttle for her. Hy’s fingers did the same, gripping my shoulder.

  An eerie hush fell over the airfield; all motion, save that of the Star, seemed suspended. Seconds stretched and stretched as it plummeted straight down—

  “Matty! No!” Hy’s voice, my own echoing it.

  The Star smashed into the runway, metal ripping and shearing. Screams erupted from the spectators, but the sound of the explosion drowned them out. I rocked back against Hy as a fireball ballooned upward. His fingers went slack on my shoulders and he moaned.

  I pushed away from him and started scrambling over the barricade.

  “McCone, stop!”

  I swung my feet to the other side, jumped down, and ran toward the billowing smoke and flames.

  “Stop!”

  The heat was intense, the fumes thick and oily. I paused, gasping for breath.

  “What the hell’re you doing!” Hy’s hand grasped my arm above the elbow.

  I swung around, saw his wild eyes. Tried to pull away, but his fingers bit into my flesh.

  “Ripinsky, we’ve got to go to her!”

  He didn’t move. I lashed out at his hand, trying to break his grasp. He tightened it. Then he wrapped both arms around me and pulled me to his chest.

  I looked over my shoulder. Black smoke and orange flames, fire truck on the move. People running, panicked. Screams and shouts and that hideous roaring as the fire consumed—

  Oh, Jesus, Matty… !

  Hy dragged me back to the barricade, pushed it aside, and began moving me toward the parking area, arms rigid. I stumbled on something. When he righted me, I looked down and saw Matty’s brilliant yellow-and-red scarf hanging limply from my neck.

  Hy kept moving me along. We were going against the flow of the crowd, toward the gate. I stumbled again. Again he righted me. Resistance spent, I leaned on him. My face was wet. I touched my fingertips to it, heard myself sob. How long had I been crying?

  I looked up at Hy. No tears. Just eyes that seemed to be all black dilated pupils looking out of a deathly pale mask—and a grim purpose in the set of his mouth.

  We were in among the parked cars and trucks and vans before he spoke. “Where’d you leave the rental car?”

  “… I don’t know.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know! Ripinsky, we can’t leave. Matty—”

  He pushed me back against the side of a van—hard. Held me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes.

  I stared at him through my tear-clogged lashes. What I saw brought to mind something Anne-Marie Altman had said of him on the day he and I first met.

  He’s still dangerous.

  “Matty’s dead,” he said flatly. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

  I tried to reply, but my larynx wouldn’t work.

  “The NTSB will investigate,” he went on, “and they won’t come up with anything conclusive; there’s not enough left of the plane. But you and I know what happened: the Star was tampered with. After Matty and I preflighted it.”

  Was that right? Or was he trying to reassure himself that he’d been in no way responsible for what happened? No, he always took on the blame if blame was due. But perhaps he’d overlooked something. No, he’d spent his whole life around aircraft. He wouldn’t have missed a detail, not when it came to the safety of someone he cared about.

  “It could’ve been pilot error,” I said. “She was so stressed—”

  “McCone, that last loop was a piece of cake for Matty. She wasn’t stressed enough to make that kind of m
istake—look at how she performed the rest of her routine.”

  “Then what…?”

  “Something happened in the cockpit. Something that threw her off just long enough.”

  I sucked in my breath, images flashing through my mind of what it must have been like for her. They were more than I could handle—now or ever. I shook my head, trying to drive them away.

  “McCone?”

  I looked up at Hy. Angry fires burned in the depths of his eyes. Beneath my insulating layer of shock I felt the same fires ignite inside me.

  “Ripinsky, we’d better talk with the NTSB investigators—”

  “No, we talk with no one.” He scanned my face, searching for—what? I didn’t know, but after a moment he apparently found it. “We talk with no one,” he repeated softly, “because I don’t want officials getting in my way. Because I am going to find out who did this to Matty. And when I do, I am going to kill the bastard.”

  He would. I knew he would. He’d killed before.

  I closed my eyes in an effort to cut through my swirling emotions. Narrowed my focus to the days and years behind us, to the days and years ahead.

  Then, for reasons of my own that had nothing to do with Matty and everything to do with Hy, I said, “I’m with you.”

  Three Years Ago

  “So what’s your altitude, McCone?”

  “… Nine hundred feet.”

  “And your airspeed?”

  “Out of control.”

  “And what should it be?”

  “Sixty-five.”

  “And at this point on final, what should your altitude be?”

  “A hell of a lot lower.”

  “So what’re you gonna do?”

  “Full throttle, and go around.”

  “All right!”

  “You like that, huh?”

  “I’d like it a hell of a lot better if you’d get off the carburetor heat and raise those flaps.”

  “Oops! I knew I was forgetting something.”

  “That’s okay. You worry about cleaning up the plane after you put that power in. Now—you know what just happened?”

  “… I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “When you opted to go around, you exhibited good judgment. With some prompting from me, of course.”

  “Jesus, Matty, I make judgment calls every day of my life—and most of them are pretty good.”

  “But you aren’t making them in the left seat of a plane on final. That was a first. Now, why don’t you try to put this thing on the ground again?”

  “Right. Los Alegres traffic, Cessna three-two-Sierra, turning base.”

  “You know, McCone, what flying is all about—the absolute essence of it—is good judgment. You make the best call you know how under the circumstances, and then you move on it—no hesitating. And if that call involves aborting a takeoff or a landing, you don’t worry about what the folks sitting around outside the diner are going to think of you. You just do it, and don’t let your pride get in your way.”

  “Are we talking flying here? Or are we talking life?”

  “What do you think? Hey, look at that—a perfect glide path. You’ve got the airport made.”

  PART TWO

  November 23–27

  Seven

  I’ll try to get the key to Matty’s room,” I said to Hy.

  He nodded and went to stand in the doorway of the bar. I crossed the deserted motel lobby to the desk. My shock-induced insulation was intact again; I felt calm and purposeful, as if this were an ordinary afternoon, as if this were an ordinary act in the course of a routine investigation. The clerk was reading People magazine; he barely looked up when I said I’d misplaced my key to room 211, just reached for the rack where the duplicates hung. I took the one he held out and hurried back to Hy.

  He stood rigid, staring at the big-screen TV that was playing to a nearly empty room. My eyes were drawn to the lurid images of a special news report: billowing smoke and twisted wreckage and firefighters dousing the flames. Then the horrifying scene was replaced by a publicity still of Matty. I moaned and turned away. Hy, his face set, put his arm around my shoulders as we went outside.

  “Do you suppose the Bay Area affiliate is carrying that?” I asked.

  “Most likely. Have you ever known the TV news to pass up a really good disaster story?”

  “God, what if Zach sees it? He shouldn’t find this out that way!”

  “Better call, warn Rae or Ricky.”

  I fished out my phone and punched in their number as we skirted the pool in the courtyard. Rae answered, sounding shaky. When I started to explain why I’d called, she said, “Too late. The kids were channel-surfing, and they just saw the news spot.”

  “Damn! How’s Zach dealing?”

  “Badly. He ran out onto the lower deck and is just standing at the rail, staring at the water. Ricky’s giving him a minute, and then he’ll try to comfort him.”

  “Poor kid! Listen, we’ll be leaving here pretty soon. I’ll come straight to the house, see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “Okay, we’ll look for you. Shar, what’s going to happen to Zach now?”

  Good question. Logically, since John Seabrook had no relatives that anyone knew of, Zach should be turned over to the juvenile authorities until his father could be located. But I wasn’t about to inflict that kind of abandonment on a sensitive and grieving boy—especially now that I had full reason to believe his life was in danger. “I know this is a lot to ask—”

  “No, it’s not. He’s welcome here as long as he needs a place to stay. You know, you might bring Hank or Anne-Marie in on this; Zach should probably have legal counsel, somebody to look out for his best interests, in case his father doesn’t turn up.”

  “Good point. We’ll talk more about that when Hy and I get there.” I broke the connection as we reached the door to 211. Matty had kept her room, planning to clean up and rest before flying back to Los Alegres. As I inserted the key I asked Hy, “Exactly what are we looking for?”

  “Seabrook’s letter. Matty took the lamb in the plane with her, but I suspect she left the letter here. It didn’t sit at all well with her, and she’d’ve considered it bad luck to fly with it aboard.”

  “Was she really that superstitious?”

  He shrugged, stepping into the room. “No more than you or I.”

  “I’m not superstitious.”

  “No? Then why do you always keep that piece of coral Hank brought you from Hawaii in your purse? Why do you automatically transfer it when you change purses?”

  “… I don’t know. Habit?”

  “Would you fly without it?”

  “I wouldn’t cross the street without it.”

  “I rest my case.”

  The room was afternoon-warm and stuffy. Housekeeping had been in, but there still was a half cup of coffee on the small table; a T-shirt printed with the likeness of Beryl Markham and the legend “Women Fly” was draped over one of the chairs. Quickly I looked away.

  Hy went straight to the duffel bag that sat on the low bureau, pawed around inside it, and came up with Seabrook’s letter. He handed it to me and continued searching.

  “We’ve got the letter, Ripinsky. Let’s head back and see to Zach.”

  “Hold on a minute. Here it is.” He held up a black leather notebook. “Matty’s appointments calendar.”

  I took it and thumbed through the past couple of weeks. “Listen to this. Three o’clock on Wednesday: ‘Dr. Sandler, re John.’”

  “What kind of doctor?”

  “Doesn’t say.”

  “And why did she consult with him about Seabrook?”

  I shook my head and slipped the notebook and the letter into my bag. “Are we out of here?”

  “Yeah, but I want to stop by the desk a minute, ask what time Matty’s mechanic checked out.” Hy leaned against the wall by the door, his face haggard and sad. “I bet they’ll tell me he checked out this morning, rather than
this afternoon.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When Matty and I got back to the field after lunch, the mechanic, Ed Cutter, was gone. He told us this morning that he planned to stay on tonight, party with some friends, but he left a note for Matty saying he’d been called away on a family emergency. She took it at face value; I shouldn’t have.”

  “You think Cutter was the one who tampered with the plane?”

  “Had to be. Our man was on the job before we finished the preflight, and I gave him orders not to let anybody but Cutter near it. When Matty and I got back to the field, he said that Cutter had been fiddling around in the cockpit, but nobody else had touched it.”

  “What do you think Cutter did in there?”

  “Planted some kind of device—a smoke bomb, whatever. Probably remote-controlled. Cutter knew Matty’s routine, would’ve known at what altitude and attitude she’d be unable to recover if distracted.”

  “So he claimed to be called away—”

  “And was somewhere in the crowd, pushing the button. Dammit, McCone, I read him completely wrong, and I’ll never forgive myself for it.”

  Two hours later we arrived at the house in Seacliff. Rae opened the door, took one look at my face, and put her arms around me. Ricky appeared, clasped Hy’s hand, said, “I’m sorry, man.”

  Hy acknowledged the sympathy with a remote nod. He’d been silent on our flight back from Sacramento, as silent as Zach on yesterday’s flight from Los Alegres. When Rae released me I asked, “How’s Zach?”

  “Still on the deck and not talking at all. Both Ricky and Habiba tried to get through to him—and failed.”

  “Let me try.” I escaped to the powder room, where I washed and composed my face. Then I went downstairs.

  The lower floor of the house opened onto a cantilevered deck high above China Beach. In the gathering twilight I spotted Zach’s thin frame standing erect and very still at its rail. The strong sea wind stirred his curls and made his too flimsy cotton shirt snap like a flag. I started across the room that Rae and Ricky had furnished as an entertainment area for the kids, then stopped when I saw Habiba at the sliding glass door.