Slow Burn (26 page)

I dialed nine
and then Bruce Gill's number at KOMO-TV. I'm not sure what his job title is,
but he's got the corner office on the top floor and he shaves only once a week
or so. We'd played together on the same thirty-five-and-older basketball team
until his knees gave out. He was a gunner. You passed that sucker the ball, you
never saw it again. "Gill."

"That's
not very customer-friendly."

"Customers
don't have this number. You still taking all the shots, or do you pass the ball
once in a while?"

"Oh, don't
start that shit with me, man. It was you . . ."

It was like
finding something I didn't know was missing. As we bantered back and forth, I
realized how long it had been since I'd indulged in this particular brand of
male bonding and how much I missed having it in my life. I wondered how its
disappearance had managed to escape my notice.

"Hey, What’s
going on with Lola King over at KING? How come she's on every day this week?
She making a comeback or something?"

"Think. You
just asked me why a corporation did something."

He had a point.
"Okay, where's the money coming from?"

"The
Meyerson Corp. They've got two mil a year in TV Ads to use as candy. They get
whatever they want. I hear they went to management and offered them the spots
in return for the full-week special."

"Isn't
this animal rights stuff going to hurt her business, too?"

"The way I
see it, she can afford it and Del Fuego can't." "Yeah," was all
I could think to say. "You still play?" he asked.

"Nah. The
wheels came off a couple of years ago. The kids kept getting bigger and
younger." "Getting old's a bitch," he said. Couldn't say I
disagreed.

In a way, it
was comforting. When I'd ditched them this morning, they'd stayed a demure four
or five cars back. If they'd done that again, I'd have been worried about
whether or not they had my car wired. As it was, they were standing on the
circular sidewalk, leaning back against the Taurus, when I came out the front
door and handed the valet the ticket for the Fiat. No more Mr. Nice Guy. They
didn't give a hoot whether or not I knew they were following me. The bigger of
the two wanted to make macho eye contact, so I made small talk with the valet
captain and pretended not to notice them. This one was really gonna piss them
off I took the freeway to the Forty-fifth Street exit and stayed all the way to
the left. The cops were two cars back, behind a Federal Express truck, when I
stopped and waited for the light.

I
turned left
on the green, crossed the freeway and started up the hill toward
Wallingford. The buildings used to be a service station and a
mom-and-pop grocery which
eventually came to be owned by the same Greek family. If I remembered
correctly, they'd started out with the store and then later bought the
gas
station, or maybe it was the other way around. They'd sold out about
five years
ago, and the buildings had been converted into a Mike's hamburger stand
and a
Colortime carpet store.

Back in the
sixties, right after they bought the station, hoping to encourage their
customers to avail themselves of both the gas station and the store, the Greeks
had connected their two businesses with a short driveway. Considering the
recent rninimart/gas station frenzy, a savvy move indeed.

What the Greeks
had joined together, the new owners had not bothered to render asunder. Thus,
when you got to be the third car from the front in Mike's drive-up line, only a
small concrete curb stood between you and turning right into the carpet store's
parking lot and then out into Donald Avenue. Yep, they were gonna hate this
one.

Using my signal
so as not to confuse the fellas, I turned into the suicide lane, waited for the
traffic to thin, then darted across Forty-fifth into Mike's. The Taurus stayed
in the center lane to see what I was going to do.

Like I figured,
there was no way they were going to get in the drive-up line with me. Everybody
knew the old "drive-in dodge." All you had to do was get a citizen
between you and them in the line, and they were as good as lost. No, these were
pros. They weren't going for that crap. As I wound around the back, they pulled
into the parking lot and backed the car up against the west side of the
building, perfectly positioned to go either way on Forty-fifth, once I made my
exit.

I was six cars
from the drive-up window when I drew up to the speaker. I took the electronic
gargling to be a request for my order and asked for a small Coke.

"Is that
all?"

"that’s
it."

"That will
be one-o-six at the second window, please."

In front of me,
a blue Toyota PTA van bounced on its springs as a herd of toddlers threw
themselves around the interior. The red Citation, first in line, left the
window. Five from the front. Then four, and then finally the black pickup, just
before the Toyota, eased out into traffic, the van pulled forward and I was on
my way, cutting hard right, bumping up and over the curb, rolling down past the
fantastic free-installation offer and out into Donald Avenue.

I drove all the
way to Westlake in a cloud of adrenaline fumes. There's something about getting
away with something that still tickles my central nervous system. I checked
numbers as I rolled up Westlake. Not even close. I drove another quarter mile
and checked again. Here somewhere. I pulled to the right, onto the wide,
connected parking area that runs nearly the length of the busy road.

The sign said
PACIFIC SKYWAYS. Scenic tours of Seattle, Mount Rainier and the San Juans.
Charter service to B.C. Sounded pretty ambitious for a battered gray shack
wedged between a yacht brokerage and dry-dock yard. I parked the Fiat and
stepped out onto the gangway.

Shards of
driftwood bobbed along democratically with a couple of pop cans and a torn
Styrofoam cooler. To my right, a gaggle of houseboats sat cheek to jowl with
one another, bobbing slightly in the breeze, emitting a low chorus of squeaks
and groans. The north arch of the Aurora Bridge was visible at the far left,
and beyond that, Fremont, Ballard and the Sound.

At the far end
of the dock, two yellow-and-white De Havilland Beavers rocked front to back on
their pontoons, like - a brace of rambunctious puppies eager to slip the leash.
The Beaver is to aircraft.what no automobile manufacturer has ever managed on
the ground, an unstoppable, unbreakable machine of such endurance and reliability
as to have become the stuff of legend. As I approached, the big Pratt &
Whitney power plants seemed to smile at me with rows of ribbed teeth.

I was standing
at the end of the dock looking in through the nearest pilot's window when he
spoke. "Help you with something?"

He was about
fifty, sandy hair gone to gray, and sporting a waxed handlebar mustache. On one
breast it said, "Pacific Flying Service"; on the other,
"Rick." I walked over and stuck out my hand. "I'm Leo
Waterman."

He took it.
"Rick Bodette, Pacific Flying Service." "I really love these old
Beavers."

"Finest
utility aircraft ever made," he agreed. "I take it you've flown in
them before."

I told him
about how the old man always knew somebody who knew somebody who'd fly us up to
Canada to go fishing a couple of times a year. Some place you could only fly
into.

"Looking
to do a little flying?"

"Wish I
was. What I'm looking for is somebody around here who's seen this guy
lately."

I pulled the
newspaper ad with Jack and Bunky from my back pocket and unfolded it. The
newsprint flapped wildly in the stiff breeze until I captured both edges and
stretched it out between my hands.

"Know this
guy?" I asked.

"Which
one?" he asked with a grin.

"The one
without the halter."

"Never
seen him in my life."

"Sure?"

"Positive."

"Maybe
somebody else here ..." I began. "Nobody here but me and Andy."
"Could we ask Andy?" "Sure. Come on in."

I'd
like to
tell you that the interior of Pacific Flying Service belied its humble
exterior, but that wouldn't be true. It was a dump inside, too. Most of
the
wall space was covered by yellowing charts and colorful travel posters.
See Victoria! B.C. Place is the Place! Half a dozen blue plastic chairs
were spread around the
floor.

Scoured by
countless forgotten cigarettes, a battered counter divided the spare space
approximately in half, its worn top chipped and pulled loose from the metal
edge-molding. Behind the counter, the cramped office area was barely able to
accommodate the two desks, butted nose to nose. Not only that but . . .

Andy was an
Andi. About Rick's age, a thinning head of salt-and-pepper hair worn very
short. Not "I reject the concept of beauty and repudiate the penis
oppressor" short, but short.

"Hi,"
she said.

For a moment,
before she could get her smile fixed in place, I saw the young girl in her. As
I swallowed my greeting, her half-formed smile slid off. We stood, tilting our
heads and scowling at each other. I could feel Rick getting antsy, over on my
right.

"We know
each other, don't we?" she said.

"Yeah, I think
so."

It took us five
minutes, but we finally got it sorted out. Turned out she'd dated my ex-wife's
older brother Tom while I was in high school, and that we'd suffered through a
couple of parentally mandated double dates together back in the heyday of the
accursed panty girdle.

"You ever
talk to Tom?" I asked.

"Not in
years. You married What’s-her-name, didn't you?" "Annette, and yeah .
. . briefly."

I changed the
subject. "How long you guys been in the flying business?"

She looked to
Rick. "What is it, honey? Two years this April."

"April
sixth."

I got the whole
story. They took turns telling it. She'd been the assistant superintendent in
the Lake Washington school district for twenty-two years when she found herself
suddenly burned out by the politics and pointlessness of public education and
in dire need of something new.

Rick had been
on the original marketing team for Microsoft's first commercially available
version of MS-DOS and, like so many thousands of the MS-faithful before him,
had found himself, as a relatively young man, with more money than he was ever
likely to be able to spend.

The timing had
been perfect. They both retired, took flying lessons until they were both fully
rated float plane instructors—Andi had turned out to be a far more natural
pilot than Rick—then sold the house in Redmond and bought themselves a
business.

"I feel
twenty years younger," Andi said.

Then I had to
tell my story. I kept it short, which wasn't hard. My life story is in no
danger of going multivolume. The only two paid jobs I've ever had were bag boy
at the Queen Anne QFC and freelance private eye. Which turned out to be a clean
segue into what I'd come here for in the first place.

I smoothed the
paper over the counter. "Know him?" "The, cow?"

Rick burst out laughing.

"I see why
you two get along," I said.

"Yeah,
he's the guy who hired Mike for Friday," she said.

"Who's
Mike?"

Andi reached to
her left and jerked up the Levolor blind. A gray primered helicopter squatted
atop a floating dock, its still rotors sagging low over the water like the
wilted petals of a techno-flower.

"Mike
Bales," Rick said.

"Mike
around?"

Andi shook her
head. "Mike only comes down when he's got a charter."

"Any idea
what he was hired to do?" "None."

"Whatever
it is, it must be risky, though," said Rick. "How come?"

Andi pointed
her finger at her temple and made a swirling motion. "One too many combat
missions in 'Nam."

Rick explained.
"that’s his specialty. He's the one puts the geologists up on the rim of Saint Helens for their tests.

You got some
place where nobody else is willing to fly, Mike is your man."

"He isn't
the maniac who put the base jumpers on top of the Space Needle, is he?"

"You bet
he is," said Rick. "The FAA pulled his ticket for six months over
that one. He was only legal again this week."

My mind could
still recall the picture of the guy with the leather football helmet and the
protruding Marty Feldman eyes being led to the cruiser. It was worse than I'd
thought.

"You want
his number?" Andi asked.

I took the
number down, swore oaths about keeping in touch, most of which I probably
wasn't going to keep, and made my way back to the car. As I walked, I wondered
whether everyone homogenizes his life story when he finds himself compelled to
tell it. I am always overcome with the desire to hurry up and get it over with,
as if talking about myself is somehow in questionable taste. I seem to grind
off the highs and lows in an odd desire to appear terse and conventional. Or
maybe ifs because, after a certain age, we all know the pain, and by then most
of us have sense enough not to pass it around unnecessarily.