The Four Corners Of The Sky (24 page)

Annie was almost letting herself think that it was sweet of her father to remember her birth weight and the exact time of her birth, sweet that he had kept her birth certificate and then enclosed it with twelve thousand dollars in the blue suitcase he’d left with her in the Pilgrim Rest’s yard.

She stopped herself. What was she doing? Her father hadn’t remembered
her.
He’d left her there in his sister Sam’s front yard and vanished, just as he’d made up the passwords and then had forgotten what they were. Nothing stayed with Jack Peregrine. Nothing held.

Below Annie, the lights of St. Louis sprinkled the far horizon. The name of the city had always given her a good feeling because it was the city that had believed in Lindbergh, whose citizens had come together to raise the money to give him the plane the
Spirit of St. Louis
.

“St. Louis. Malpy, look!”

As Annie reached for her radio mike, abruptly, the propeller noise changed, then the Piper Warrior engine missed, spluttered. The warning lights came on and stayed on, the engine lost thrust and a sudden air pocket dropped the plane down through the pitch-black night.

The frame of the
King
rattled loudly, its wings jerking back and forth at a tilt, spilling Annie’s thermos of coffee. Gauges on the instrument panel quivered. The yoke shook in its socket. A small compartment door slapped open and closed. Malpy began to shriek, scrabbling at Annie’s arm to be picked up. “Okay, okay,” she told the dog. “Just take it easy.” She corrected but it was hard to keep the plane flying level again.

“Malpy, we’re in trouble.”

The exasperated air traffic controller at Lambert–St. Louis International Airport lost his temper when Annie described engine trouble and requested emergency landing priority. What the crap was she doing up there in that single-engine Piper in this weather anyhow? He snarled that it was a madhouse down here at
STL
and unless she was in a death spiral, she would just have to get in line. And whoever the Lt. D. K. Destin was who had called him with her
ETA
from Destin Airworks, in bumblefuck Emerald, North Carolina, wherever the shit that was, that man had the foulest mouth ever heard in this control room…Okay okay, just hang on. Circle. Keep circling.

She went into a holding pattern. To calm Malpy as she waited for further instructions from the air traffic control tower, she hummed, “Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, meet me at the fair…”

A memory of her father softly singing that song floated up from some long ago highway drive. “We will dance the hoochie koochie…” What in the world was ‘the hoochie koochie’? And why had he sung that particular song so often? What did St. Louis mean to him? Why did he want the Piper Warrior brought there after all these years?

As a child she had been always questioning everything, uncertain of Jack Peregrine, checking a compass that couldn’t hold true north. But with Sam and Clark, she’d found her bearings. And now, horribly, her father had brought that disorientation back into her life. Was his asking her to meet him in St. Louis just one more scam of his? Wasn’t it likely that his “I’m dying” was just the setup of another swindle?

When Trevor had scanned the
FBI
database for her father’s name, he’d found “John Peregrine” under “Confidence Men.” Jack was an “artist” of con art, that’s all. He tricked the gullible and greedy into handing over what money they had for an impossible means of making more.

Make another circle, the
ATC
radioed her.

Maybe this was some inheritance scheme of her dad’s to get Pilgrim’s Rest away from Sam. Or maybe he needed Annie’s help with a big con that somehow involved an airplane, a con of the sort that had made up her bedtime stories as a child. She’d heard dozens: How he planned to pass himself off as the illegitimate son of the current king of Spain, Juan Carlos I. How he planned to use her photographic memory to access data (like a human keystroke logger), in order to work out the biggest wire-transfer bank heist in history. How he planned to seed a gold mine in the mountain wilderness of Colorado or plant a fake Chagall in Boca Raton. How he planned to sell shares in a cure for aging, shares in the future, in possibility. All the stories were versions of the Queen of the Sea. Con art.

Her father had told Annie with reverence that the showman P. T. Barnum had once glued fish tails to monkeys and persuaded the public they were mermaids. That the swindler Count Victor Lustig (who worked the card tables on Atlantic crossings with Nicky Arnstein) had sold the Eiffel Tower to a reputable Parisian scrap iron dealer. That a larcenous midwesterner named Oscar Hartzell had made sane Americans believe they were descended from Sir Francis Drake and that the Drake millions still sitting in the Bank of England could be theirs. Seventy thousand of them had given Hartzell their hard-earned money to fight for their rights. The big con.

Make one circle, the
ATC
told her.

It was in him, Jack claimed, to pull off the big con. He could sell Mary’s milk, Buddha’s earrings, and Cleopatra’s suicide note. “Your daddy,” Jack would say grinning to Annie, tossing her in air, “your daddy understands. You sell people dreams they want to believe in. Remember that, darlin’. Tell people that life is what they dream.”

But Annie had developed a different take on life. Life was what you
did,
not what you dreamed.[__] For years she had made up dreams about the mother she’d never met, dreams that were variations on the romances her father had told her. Her mother a sad princess, a dying star, a lonely heiress, a scientist who could save others but not herself. Always in these romances her mother’s life was incomplete until Annie walked into it. But her dreams weren’t true; deep down she always knew it and by Annapolis she’d given them up. You couldn’t dream a hundred push-ups in a field of frozen mud at Annapolis. You couldn’t dream a plane off the rolling deck of an aircraft carrier. You had to fly it.

You couldn’t dream a safe landing after your engine stopped firing, you had to keep your speed up; you couldn’t let your plane slip into a stall.

The gas gauge of the
King of the Sky
plunged to empty. Annie hit its glass cover but it didn’t move. She listened to the ATC’s instructions for her shortened clearance.

Suddenly a gust almost flipped the plane. She was close to a snap spin and knew she was in real danger. The engine was practically dead. Annie hadn’t flown the
King
in a long time. She sped back in time until she could hear D. K.’s voice beside her, talking her through the crisis. “Get the nose down. Listen to me. Not up, down, not up.” With the runway lights of the airport closing in, she fought against instinct, forcing the nose of the Piper lower and banking the plane into a glide less than a thousand feet above the concrete of Lambert–St. Louis International Airport.

T
he air traffic controller was enthusiastically describing an amazing landing to a young
VIP
executive who’d asked to see him in the Control Tower. “We’re a nuthouse here at
ATCT
, it’s Fourth of July, whole corridor’s socked in. So in comes some Navy bimbo in a, get this, 1975 Piper single-engine! She blows in, tail of a tornado, circles, her engine’s conking out, I mean whacked. We gotta give her emergency clearance. Then this shitass 505 from
DFW
screws up, swings out on her runway, whap in the Piper’s nose. Jesus, this kid, I swear she lifts that damn Piper
over
the 505 on fumes and
still
puts it down like a dragonfly on a fuckin’ lily. Another sixty feet, she would have rammed the 202 to London. I’m on the floor popping digitalis like M&Ms. I should retire tomorrow. But how often you gonna see something like that? Welcome to St. Louis.”

The formerly dyspeptic air traffic controller shook hands with a tall young man with rich black hair and a trim black mustache, in an expensive black suit. The man tapped him on the chest. “Excuse me, sir. She wouldn’t like you calling her a bimbo.” He spoke in a Georgia drawl.

“Calling who?”

“The flyer, the naval officer in the Piper Warrior.”

“Jesus, you know her?”

“My wife. And I don’t think you want to be using that kind of language with a lady.”

“Your wife?”

“Lt. Annie Goode. She never used the Hopper.” The young man added wistfully, “Not even when she was on Connie Chung.”

The controller shook him by the arm. “What are you talking about? Was she on the news? Did she hijack that plane or something?”

“Annie, ha! Annie is totally by the book.” The young man introduced himself as Lt. Brad Hopper, U.S. Navy Reserve and president of Hopper Jets, Inc.

“Oh,
you’re
Hopper. Hopper Jets; yeah, we got your call you were okay with her coming in at your gate. But the message got screwed up. Anyhow we hauled her Piper over to Terminal E already, because—”

Brad shut him off smoothly. “I wanted to come on in and personally thank you for your cooperation. ’Scuse me, I’ve got to take this call.” He flipped open his cell phone. “Hi there, Sam! Yeah, I’m here. She just landed.” He listened for a long while. “Well, hell, you think that’s what Annie really wants? Okay, I’m with you, 100 percent, but I can’t be getting involved in anything that’s not, you know…But I want to help…Listen, I’ll make a phone call, I’ve got friends here. I’ll do it right now…I know, I know, I won’t say a word to her…What, here?…Damn it!…Okay, tell him to stay right where he is. I’ll call you back in ten. Just keep my name out of it.”

At the same time, down the corridor, Annie, holding over her shoulder the cloth carrier in which Malpy was squirming, phoned Pilgrim’s Rest and spoke to Clark, who was now in bed reading a biography of Thomas Edison.

Annie skipped over the details of her emergency near crash-landing and told him only that she’d arrived safely in St. Louis. The trip had been routine. No problem.

Clark let out a breath. “God knows what you mean by ‘routine,’ but okay, don’t feed Malpy seafood. Remember he’s allergic. Don’t give him coffee; keeps him awake. I don’t know where Sam is. She’s been running off every few minutes to talk on her cell phone ever since I got back from the hospital…I’m not sure what she’s up to. Maybe she’s in love…”

“It’s overrated.”

Clark said that only the young could be so sure. “By the way, Brad showed up in a jet at Destin’s, right when you were taxiing out.”

Annie had heard that news. “D. K. radioed me about it. I gotta say, it was nice of Brad to set up parking for me here on the Hopper lot.”

“He’s only nice for a reason.”

She noted that everyone was only nice for a reason.

“Brad came to Emerald to propose to you,” Clark warned. “He had an engagement ring in a box with a ribbon. I think Sam’s all for it. For a Lesbian, she’s obsessed with marriage.”

“Brad had a ring? You’re kidding?!” But she sounded a little uncertain as she added, “What do I need Brad’s ring for? I’ve already got a real zillion-carat emerald from Jack Peregrine, right?”

Clark made himself chuckle. “Yep, you’ve got a zillion-carat emerald.” He was wondering if she was thinking of going back to Brad. “Hey, maybe Brad’s got the same ring he gave you the first time. Didn’t you give it back to him when you caught him with Harmony?”

“Melody.”

Clark said, “He’s headed for St. Louis now.”

“No way.”

Suddenly Sam burst into Clark’s room, flipping on the light, stuffing her cell phone into her bathrobe pocket. “Is that Annie?”

Clark put the phone to his chest. “No, it’s Jill calling from Belize; she wants her tropical fish back. Of course, it’s Annie. She’s at the airport—”

Annie interrupted. “I’ve got to go. Headed for the Admirals Club. Just hug her and tell her I’m okay.”

But Sam pulled the receiver away from Clark. “Annie, all those Peregrine emeralds and rubies are real. Really real. Your dad must have dug them up. They’re on your hat.”

Clark took the phone away. “Ignore Sam,” he advised.

“What’s she talking about, emeralds and rubies are real?”

“Just that she loves her brother. Don’t get yourself mixed up in something illegal. Good night, sweetheart. Call us. We love you.”

“You too. Okay, off to find the Dying Dad.”

Sam and Clark talked for a while about how it was a relief that Annie had landed safely in St. Louis, despite the storm. Clark hoped, but doubted, that Jack would be at the Admirals Club waiting for her. “Maybe now we can all get some sleep,” he sighed.

Sam was biting her lip so nervously that Clark asked her what her problem was. “Nothing,” she said evasively and hurried out of his room.

At the airport, Annie took a shuttle from the hangar to the main terminal where, glancing up at the dome, she was struck by what she saw. Floating in space above her hung the St. Louis airport’s prize possession, Charles Lindbergh’s 1934 Ryan Monocoupe D-145 with its sleek black-striped body. There was its registration number: NX211 in bold black letters on its orange under-wing, the ID number Lindbergh had been allowed to transfer to this plane from his earlier craft, the
Spirit of St. Louis.
NX211.

It was the same alphanumerical that made up part of one of her father’s passwords. So that was it. NX211. That’s why the PS in her father’s FedEx said “Lindbergh.” Now she had the bulk of the code, which combined her birth certificate information with the ID number of Lindbergh’s plane. All she needed was the other plane whose identification number was the last part of the password. She could solve this problem and return to her life.

In her peripheral vision she noticed a man, about her age, leaning against the wall by a news rack, leafing through magazines. He looked up, smiling broadly at her. He was a very handsome man with short dark-gold curled hair, wearing tight jeans, a sky-blue T-shirt, and old brown leather cowboy boots. Flustered, she forced herself to look at him. Neither of them looked away. Then Annie continued through the B/C/D connector and headed toward the Admirals Club.