Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor (18 page)

His eyes had put up a shield. “No trouble.
Woman gets hassled, she can bug out of the call. She invites a guy
over or goes out with him, that’s her business. We don’t give no
guarantees.”

“You keep records of the calls?”

He sneaked a peek at the wall where his
occupational license was taped over a crack. Probably figured me
for a city inspector and wondered when I’d show him my palm.

I pointed back to his main computer. “All the
calls stored in there?”

“Hell no! I wouldn’t clog up our hard memory
with that shit.”

“How many members you have?”

“Three hundred fifty men. Almost two hundred
women. Hey, we’re a member of the BBB.”

“So what’s stored in there?”

“It’s programmed to record how many times
members call in and how long they talk. After fifty hours, you
gotta renew.”

“So it records who they talk to… .”

“That’d be an invasion of privacy,” he said
with undue formality.

“But it could be done, if you wanted to know
who a client spoke with, say, two nights ago?”

“The calls are coded numerically. It could
be—”

“What the hell!” Bobbie Blinderman demanded,
towering over Max the Jockey. “Just who the hell are you, buster?”
In her bare feet now, she was three inches shorter, but no
friendlier. She had silently prowled back to the counter from her
position as gatekeeper of erotica and her ebony eyes glared at
me.

I gave her a daffy grin. “Just a lonely
guy—”

“Get your jollies somewhere else!” she
ordered, pointing toward the door.

“With a grand-jury subpoena,” I added,
pulling a blue-backed paper out of my back pocket and sliding it
across the counter. Max stared at it a moment, then picked it up as
if afraid to leave prints. Bobbie looked straight at me with those
long-lashed eyes, the sanguine complexion a tone redder.

“Flatfoot faggot,” she hissed.

“
Your
 preference?” I politely
inquired.

This and other e-books by Paul Levine may be found
at
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JAKELASSITER

THE SILKEN SKY WAS ENDLESS, the stars
infinite, the breeze sweet with a thousand promises. On a night
like this, the past is forgotten and the future is forever.

Tony Kingston loved flying at night, the huge
aircraft slicing through the tar black sky like some tri-masted
sailing vessel on a great adventure. Which is what Kingston thought
when feeling poetic, when he let the drone of the three massive
engines wash over him, playing their serene song.

Other times, burdened with the reality of a
discount air carrier in the era of deregulation, he thought he was
flying a bus, an over-crowded, undermaintained, ancient clunker of
a bus. Now, as he acknowledged instructions from Miami Center and
descended to eleven thousand feet he felt the big jet’s power under
his hands. It was still a remarkable beast, four hundred thousand
pounds of muscle, one million separate parts in all. Looking as if
it shouldn’t be able to get off the ground at all, this huge
aircraft was a testament to man’s genius, he thought, just as
surely as man was a testament to God’s genius.

Hell, the fuselage of the DC-10 looks like
one of those fat Cuban cigars—the Robustos—I bring back from
Havana.

Tony Kingston looked through the V-shaped
windshield and into the night. To the left was the vast darkness of
the Atlantic Ocean. Below and to the right were the twinkling
lights of Florida’s Gold Coast, Palm Beach merging with Ft.
Lauderdale and farther south, Miami Beach. In less than twenty
minutes, they should be pulling up at the gate at MIA. Listening to
the soothing white noise of the slipstream, he took the measure of
his own life, calculating credits and debits, figuring he was
solidly in the plus column.

A former combat pilot, Kingston sometimes
missed the action, the camaraderie of the flight squadron. But he
overly romanticized it, he knew, and flying a fighter was a young
man’s game. What he had now was a career: chief pilot for Atlantica
Airlines. The title almost sounded military. So why did the job
often leave him wanting more?

Because commercial aviation is to flying
what elevator music is to Mozart.

But what had he expected? Surely not the same
rush he got from his beloved A-6 Intruder rocketing off the deck of
a carrier, a load of HARM missiles slung under its wings.

“Miami Center, this is Atlantica
six-four-zero at eleven thousand,” said copilot Jim Ryder into the
radio.

“Roger, six-four-zero. Maintain eleven
thousand,” came the scratchy reply.

In a few moments, they’d be handed off to
Miami Approach Control, which would guide them from the ocean to
the airport for landing. With a steady easterly sea breeze, they
would make a sweeping loop over the Everglades to the west of the
city and come back again, landing into the wind. It was routine.
Tony would line them up with the radio signals that indicate the
descent profile and the runway center line, then ease the big bird
to the ground. Copilot Ryder would keep up the chatter with
Approach Control, and Larry Dozier, the flight engineer, would scan
the myriad gauges, which assured that hundreds of mechanical,
electrical, and hydraulic systems were performing as intended.
Within minutes, the passengers would be heading to their hotels or
homes or cruise ships.

“Atlantica six-four-zero, expect Harvest
Three approach for runway nine left,” Kingston heard in his
earphones. On his right, Ryder opened the approach chart.

“Confirm intercept altitude at fifteen
hundred feet and decision height two hundred,” Kingston told his
copilot.

“Roger that,” Ryder said, consulting the
chart. “Final approach fix is Oscar.”

Kingston looked forward to the landing. Even
with all the computerized help, it still took a warm body to bring
the plane home. For all its drawbacks, being a commercial pilot
still beat a suburban commute and a nine-to-five job.

So why did he miss the adrenaline jolts he
remembered from the Gulf War? He could still feel the G forces on
takeoff from the 
John F. Kennedy
 that sunny and
windy January day, the heightened heartbeat as he approached the
target. One of the “Sunday Punchers,” he dropped a missile down the
smokestack of the Iraqi cargo ship 
Almutanabbi
, docked
at a Kuwaiti port. The American public watched the whole thing on
CNN, including an interview afterward with Kingston on the deck of
the carrier. He was unshaven, his dark hair tousled by the wind.
Behind him, a navy seaman was painting a hash mark in the shape of
a ship on the nose of his fighter. Kingston smiled and spoke
comfortably into the camera, his crooked grin and pugnacious chin
seeming to symbolize American fortitude.

When he watched the grainy, black-and-white
videotape of the bombing, Kingston was riveted by something he
couldn’t see from his fighter: two men walking on the products
jetty alongside the 
Almutanabbi
. They paused and looked
up. So strange. They must have heard the jet or the whistling
approach of the missile.

One man said something to the other and
shrugged. Then they continued walking. Several seconds later, the
blast rocked the freighter, and the two men disappeared in a fiery
cloud.

Why hadn’t they dived for cover? Why hadn’t
they run?

Now Kingston derived a tranquil satisfaction
from flying the fat Robusto filled with tourists. With all the
computers and automated gear, he knew he was no longer so much a
pilot as an operations director, troubleshooter, and systems
manager. But in an emergency, he carried the lives of three hundred
people on his strong shoulders. He was good at his job and figured
he had finally grown up. He no longer needed the rush of a catapult
takeoff from the deck of a carrier. He no longer needed
the 
Top Gun
 macho swagger, the envious looks from
men, the adulation from women. He had been a womanizer, a fault
common to combat and commercial pilots alike. Now he had a
committed relationship with a wonderful, intelligent woman, and if
she was also beautiful and twenty years his junior—so what, some
things don’t change.

“Atlantica six-four-zero, good evening,”
Miami Approach welcomed. “Turn right heading two-two-zero. Descend
and maintain eight thousand.”

Ryder acknowledged the message, and Kingston
turned the aircraft toward the west. In a few moments, they were
over Miami heading toward the Everglades. Both men listened to
conversations between Approach Control and other aircraft. At
forty-four, Kingston was older than his first officer but in better
physical shape. Jim Ryder had grown a paunch from too much hotel
room service. Tony Kingston still had a military bearing and rock
hard gut.

“Atlantica six-four-zero, you’re number
thirteen for approach.”

“Jeez, we’ll be halfway to Naples before they
bring us back,” Ryder said. He turned around in his seat to face
the flight engineer. “Hey, Larry, you want to hit South Beach
tonight?”

“Sure. Berlin Bar, maybe Bash, finish up at
Amnesia,” Larry Doziev said. “How about you, Tony?”

“No thanks. I’ve got to finish my report for
the union.”

“That’s what happens when you get married,”
Ryder said.

Kingston laughed. “I’m not
married. 
You’re
 married.”

“Yeah, but you’re acting married ever since
you and the mystery woman got together. When you gonna show her
off?”

“Maybe 
she’s
 married,”
Dozier said.

Not yet. But I’m going to change that.

He had never before committed to one woman,
always thinking the next one was the fantasy creature who would
fulfill all his needs. Now, with the passage of time and more
women—flight attendants, models, executives with one-night
layovers—in his past than he could remember, he finally had someone
whose needs he wanted to fill, a woman he loved more than he loved
himself.

Lisa. Lisa Fremont.

The girl from down the hill in Bodega Bay who
had traveled so far. He’d known her practically all her life, but
he had been blind to the hell she had endured at home. Maybe if he
hadn’t been stationed so far away, he could have done something.
For starters, he would have thrashed Harry Fremont.

Lisa. How have you done it?

Abused child to teen runaway to underage
stripper, then with the guidance of an older man—not him, damn it—a
new path, summa cum laude at Berkeley and now law school at
Stanford. He was awed by her inner strength, her accomplishments,
and he loved her dearly.

I’ve found a soul mate, not a cell mate, and
I’ll be faithful to her until the day I die.

“C’mon, Tony,” Dozier said. “Just one
drink.”

Kingston scanned the airspeed and altimeter
readings. “Sorry guys. Like I said, I’ve got work to do.
Maintenance laid off another dozen workers last week. We’ve got
twenty percent fewer mechanics and thirty percent more planes than
we did—”

“I know, I know, but you’re pissing against
the wind.”

Behind them, facing the starboard bulkhead,
flight engineer Dozier swiveled his chair toward the front of the
aircraft. “Hey, Tony, you might as well give up. Max Wanaker’s
gonna cut costs till bodies pile up, and then he’ll make
changes.”

“Tombstone technology,” Ryder said. “It’s an
old story.”

“Or they’ll say the equipment was fine,”
Dozier added, “so the accident must have been—”

“Pilot error!” Ryder shouted in mock
glee.

“It’s one thing to drop the olive from the
salad,” Kingston said, referring to a famous cost-cutting move of
another airline several years earlier. “But laying off maintenance
people, rushing inspections, and making us fly planes that ought to
be in the shop or—”

“Scrapped!” Dozier interrupted, tapping his
control panel. “This baby’s older than some of the girls Tony
screws.”

“
Used
 to screw,” Kingston
protested. There was so much he couldn’t tell them. Lisa’s
relationship with Max Wanaker, president of Atlantica Airlines was
one thing.

What could she have ever seen in him? But
then, she was still a kid.

“Tony was a helluva lot more fun when he
chased women instead of FAA inspectors,” Ryder said, getting in one
last shot.

Kingston was thumbing through the flight
manual, preparing to call out the landing checklist. “You guys want
to land this plane or bust my balls?”

“We just want the old Tony back,” Ryder
said.

Cowboys. All pilots begin as thrill-seeking
cowboys. Late nights, high speeds, and fast women. I’m damned happy
to have matured.

“You know what I want?” Tony asked, then
answered his own question. “Joe Drayton. He knows his people have
been pencil-whipping inspections they never perform. He’s gonna
sign my report.”

Ryder laughed. “No way. Drayton’s three years
from a vested pension. If he goes public, he’ll be refueling DC-3’s
in Addis Ababa.”

“You’re wrong,” Kingston said. “He’s already
slipped me the paperwork.”

Now Dozier was chuckling. “Hey, Tony, you’re
the one creating most of the paperwork. Every time an engine
coughs, you do an occurrence write-up. Every time we’re hit by a
microburst, you write a memo on inadequate training for windshear
conditions.”

“I’m just doing my job,” Kingston said.
“Three days ago at O’Hare, I spot an oil leak on my walk-around.
Some rent-a-temp mechanic comes over and wipes it with a rag. I
refuse to fly the ship and I get written up. A couple months ago,
they forget to replace the j, O-rings after doing a master chip
inspection on an L-1011. The plane t barely gets back to Atlanta
after the captain sees the oil pressure gauge light up. Plus
they’re covering up their mistakes. Did you read the bulletin on
the 757 Tom Ganter flew out of Miami last week, the one where the
instruments went haywire?”