White Cargo (6 page)

Ben and Liz had been wonderful, having him to dinner, inviting friends over, keeping him from becoming a recluse. There had even been a couple of attempts to fix him up with women, evenings that had fizzled. He simply had no interest in women, or, for that matter, anything else. Even the business, which had once given him so much satisfaction, had no further appeal for him. He had not spent more than a few hours at the office; the people there had tiptoed around him, and he hadn't felt in the least necessary. Ben had been getting feelers about a takeover by a larger company, and that was fine with Cat, not that he needed the money.

He suddenly felt ill and pulled the car over. He sat on the grass verge of the roadway, fighting nausea, trying to think of something else to do for Katie and Jinx, for some reason to go on living, and not having much luck. Suddenly, there was a loud roar overhead, and a shadow passed across the car. Cat looked up and discovered that he was parked at the end of a runway at Peachtree Dekalb Airport, a general aviation field on the outskirts of Atlanta. He watched the light airplane climb, turn, and start back toward the field.

Cat started the car and drove around to the main entrance of the airport. Passing through the gate, he immediately saw a sign reading “PDK Flight Academy.” A few moments later he sat across a desk from a pleasant man who explained the flight-training program to him. Half an hour later he sat at the end of a runway in a Cessna 152 trainer and listened carefully to the fresh-faced young instructor seated next to him.

“Okay,” the kid was saying, “full throttle, keep the airplane on the center line, watch your airspeed, and rotate at fifty knots.”

Cat pushed in the throttle, and the little airplane started to roll. He steered with the rudder pedals, nervously watching the airspeed indicator. At fifty knots he pulled back on the yoke and the airplane leapt off the runway, leaving his stomach on the ground.

“Continue straight ahead and climb to three thousand feet,” the instructor said. A few minutes later they were over Lake Lanier, forty miles to the north of the city, practicing turns. Flying was something he'd thought about off and on over the years, but he had never had the time. Now he had nothing but time. An hour later, Cat had been issued a flight manual and enrolled in the flying school.

That night he stayed up late reading the manual. The next day he took a two-hour lesson. The day after that, another. He began flying every day the weather was decent, studying the manual and workbook whenever he was grounded. He registered in a weekend seminar to accelerate his academic training and passed the FAA written examination the following day with a perfect score. He soloed ten days after beginning his training and began flying the airplane alone on practice sessions and on
cross-country flights. His concentration was total. He read every flying magazine he could get his hands on, every book he could squeeze in. He clung to the training doggedly, obsessively. It filled his life, left no room to think about anything else, and that was what he wanted.

In the middle of his fourth week of training, his instructor met him at the airplane after a solo flight. “I've scheduled you for a check ride with an FAA examiner for your private pilot's license tomorrow morning at ten o'clock,” the young man said. “I'll tell you, Mr. Catledge, you've set a record around here. I've never seen anybody work so hard and get so much packed into so short a time. I think you'll do just fine on your check ride.” They spent an hour filling out forms and making sure Cat's logbook was up to date, then Cat went home, buoyed with the idea that tomorrow, after a flying test he was confident he could pass, he would be a licensed private pilot. He started thinking about training for an instrument rating.

Back at the house, he changed into a swimsuit and went out to the pool. He dived in and began swimming slow, steady laps, balancing his kicks on each side, measuring his strokes, working every muscle. He swam twenty laps, then heaved himself onto the side of the pool, sucking in deep breaths. There was water in his eyes, and it took him a moment to realize that somebody was standing at the opposite end of the pool, staring at him. The figure was tall and slim, rather like the man he had been seeing in the mirror lately.

“Hello, Dell,” he said, finally, to his son.

The boy said nothing, just stood and stared blankly at him.

“You haven't been around,” Cat said, trying to keep his
voice neutral. “We've been trying to locate you. You've heard?”

Dell did not move any closer, but nodded. “I've been out of the country. I read about it in the papers when it happened.”

“Why didn't you come home? There was a memorial service; a lot of people were there.”

Dell seemed to think a moment before he replied. “I didn't come home because there was nothing I could do for Mother and Jinx, and because if I had come home, I might have killed you. You killed them, after all; that's how I see it.”

Cat nodded. “For once, we agree on something.”

“You accept responsibility then?” Dell asked, surprised.

“I do,” Cat replied. “One of the things about being an adult is, you have to accept responsibility for your actions. One of these days, maybe, you'll learn about that.”

The boy's face contorted. “You bastard. I should kill you now.”

“Maybe you should,” Cat replied, evenly. “You might be doing me a favor, and it shouldn't bother you much. After all, in your business, people get killed every day.”

“I simply supply a consumer need, just like you,” Dell said.

“Sure, Dell, you go on telling yourself that. Never mind the human misery you and your kind cause. The money's all that matters.”

“What about the misery you caused my mother and my sister?” he spat back.

“What about the misery
you
caused them?” Cat asked. “For two years your mother never went to sleep without fear of being wakened in the night by the police
announcing your arrest or your murder. Your sister never mentioned your name outside the family, for fear of causing embarrassment to whoever might hear it. Your gifts to them were great—constant pain and suffering. The last night of their lives I sat at dinner and saw tears come to the eyes of both of them when your name was mentioned. To their credit, they both believed there might be something in you worth saving. I haven't shared their hope for a long time now.”

“Well,” Dell said, “you needn't devote any more of your time to thinking about me. You can think, instead, of how they would still be alive and well if you hadn't been so stupid.”

“I'll do that,” Cat said. “For as long as I live.”

“I'm moving to Miami,” Dell said. “You won't be hearing from me again. That's what I came here to tell you.”

“Finally, some good news,” Cat said, bitterly.

“Yeah, I'm moving on up,” Dell replied. “I'm plugged in at the source now; no more low-level dealing—I'm in management. I'll bet I make more money this year than you do.”

“No bets on that,” Cat replied, trying hard to keep from running to the other end of the pool and beating his son to death. “Dealing in human misery has always paid well. All you have to do to win your bet is to live until the end of the year. From what I hear about your business, that won't be as easy as you think.”

“We'll see,” Dell spat at him, then turned and walked away toward the garden gate.

“We'll see,” Cat echoed quietly to himself. He slipped into the pool again and began swimming long, slow strokes. Breathe deeply, he said to himself. Bleed the anger into the water. The boy was lost; forget about him.

It didn't work.

•   •   •

Cat spent the evening sitting, staring uncomprehendingly at the bedroom television set. The flight manual lay in his lap, open and unread. His flight test the next day, something that he had been eagerly anticipating, seemed remote and uninteresting. He went to bed at midnight, wide awake, longing for oblivion, but he remained conscious for a long time. Much later, when he had slipped into a light and troubled sleep, he suddenly jerked awake. Something had wakened him, but what? There had been no noise.

Almost immediately, the telephone rang. He must have anticipated it, he thought. He glanced at the bedside clock: just after 4
A.M
. Who the hell? He felt an unexpected stab of panic. The phone rang again. Fully awake now, unreasoningly frightened, he picked up the instrument. “Hello,” he said, rather unsteadily. He was greeted by a wave of static, coming, it seemed, from a great distance. “Hello,” he said again, this time more strongly.

Then, faintly but clearly, came a voice he would have recognized anywhere on earth, at any time of the day or night, awake or asleep, a voice he had given up hope of ever hearing again.

“Daddy?” the voice said.

Cat felt a great rush of adrenaline, a tightening of the chest and throat; he seemed unable to exhale.

Before he could speak, there was a turbulent scraping at the other end of the line, followed by a loud thud, then a distant, electronic chirp as the connection was broken.

He spoke repeatedly into the telephone, shouting, begging, until finally he was quieted by the persistent sound of a dial tone coming from the instrument.

He was left alone again, bereft, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

“T
HE SENATOR IS SORRY HE COULDN'T BE HERE TO SEE YOU,
Mr. Catledge. He's chairing an intelligence committee hearing right now. I'm counsel to the committee, and I should be there myself, but the senator is very grateful for your past support, and he wanted to know what we could do for you.”

They were in the small conference room adjacent to the office of Senator Benjamin Carr, Democrat, the senior senator from Georgia. Carr's chief administrative assistant sat across the table from Cat.

“I understand, of course,” Cat said. “I've taken too much of his time already.”

“Not at all,” the man replied. “He's been very concerned about your situation.” The younger man, fortyish, Cat thought, placed his elbows on the table, folded his fingers together, and rested his chin on them. “I've been doing all the liaising with the State Department, though, so it's just as well that you and I should talk. You've just come from Foggy Bottom, have you?”

Cat nodded. “I saw the head of the Colombian desk.”

“Barker?”

“That's the one. He was very sympathetic.”

“But . . . ?”

“But he says he's done all he can. The Colombian police are unwilling to open a new investigation on the basis of a single word spoken on the telephone from somebody who's been confirmed dead.”

“I was afraid of that,” the assistant replied. “After all, you saw her dead yourself, and the Coast Guard frogmen confirmed what you saw.”

Cat shook his head. “What I saw was only for a fraction of a second, not long after I'd taken a shotgun blast in the chest. I wasn't a very reliable witness. I know I saw Katie; she was lying on her back on the port settee, but Jinx . . . the girl I thought was Jinx . . . was facedown on the saloon table, naked. I haven't seen Jinx naked since she was nine or ten, I guess, and as I said, I looked away immediately. Since we were the only three on the boat, I naturally assumed she was Jinx.”

“Who was the girl you saw, then?”

“There was a girl on the boat with the Pirate, Denny's accomplice. Maybe she was somehow substituted for Jinx—I don't know, I know it doesn't make any sense. I only got a glimpse of her—I think she was probably older than Jinx and that she was Latin, but in the state I was in when I came to—well, it's the sort of mistake I could easily have made.”

“I can understand that.”

Cat leaned forward. “What I didn't make a mistake about was the voice on the telephone. It was Jinx. She said, ‘Daddy.' It was almost the first word she ever said to me, and I've heard her say it all her life, at least until she started to grow up and decided to call me Cat. I'd know Jinx's voice anywhere, and I'd know it especially well saying that particular word. It
was
Jinx.”

The assistant was staring down at his reflection in the table. “I believe you,” he said finally. “What are your plans now? Are you going back down there?”

The mere thought of returning to Colombia filled Cat with panic. “I don't know,” he replied. “Barker, at State, advised against it in the strongest terms. He says I'm not equipped to conduct my own investigation, and God knows that's true. He won't give me assistance of any kind if I do go. Says the department won't take any responsibility.”

“So what are you going to do?” he asked, watching him closely.

Cat leaned back and sighed. “I'm going to go back down there,” he said. “It's all that's left, and I could never live with myself if I didn't do everything I possibly could to find Jinx.”

The man seemed to search Cat's face for doubt. “That's your final decision, then? You won't be dissuaded?”

“No. I'm going. I've got some money; maybe I'll go to the newspapers and offer a reward.”

A twitch of alarm seemed to cross the assistant's face. He stood up. “Will you excuse me for a few minutes? Don't leave; I'll be right back.” He left the room.

Cat walked to the window and looked out toward the Capitol dome. There really was nothing else left to do. He dreaded the thought, but he would have to go back to Colombia, to Santa Marta, and make a start. Somebody, somewhere in that country knew something. Maybe he could buy the information. The money was all he had left. They could have it all if they'd give Jinx back to him. He watched people enter and leave the Capitol, his mind growing numb with the fear of what was ahead of him.

Ten minutes passed. The assistant walked back into the room. “Sit down, will you?” he said.