Cost of Life (2 page)

In the day-dark hour before dawn, the southbound freeway was quiet and empty, which was for the best, as Larry in his Audi was swerving and weaving from lane to lane like a blind bumblebee. But how could he keep control of his steering wheel when he couldn't even keep control of the grotesque images fluttering through his mind: Marie bound and beaten and bent over a slab, Sean curled up in the corner of some indiscriminate cement cell…

This and worse, scenes culled from too many movies and countless fearmongering stories reported by the news, all regurgitating across the mindscape of his imagination and leaving his limbs to fend for themselves. Muscle memory—nothing more—drove his car that morning, and apparently muscle memory not only knew the route but liked to go fast. When Larry in his Audi crossed into the city limits, his speedometer clocked at ninety-two miles an hour.

“You should slow down,” mumbled the brutish thug. He filled out the passenger seat; his large pistol filled out the crawl space underneath the passenger seat. Behind that, on the passenger side of the backseat, lay Larry's uniform jacket, which he had shuffled off and tossed back there miles ago in an attempt to cool down.

Sean's car seat used to sit where the uniform now lay. Their boy had outgrown the car seat years ago but the suede upholstery still bore the scars of its indented imprint, as if the ghost of the car seat were actually still there. When the three of them used to go on long drives, such as visiting Marie's parents in Baton Rouge, toddler Sean often became antsy and so Larry would distract him by contorting his face into absurd, clownish distortions, which Sean would spot in the rearview mirror and then do his best to imitate.

Had Larry chanced a look in the rearview now, he might have noticed the police cruiser several car lengths behind him. He might have seen its blue lights blink to life. But Larry was barely perceiving the steering wheel, and that was no more than two feet from his face.

“You should slow down,” repeated the thug, and this time punctuated his suggestion with a flick to Larry's earlobe, just the thing enough to jar the man from his reverie of nightmares and nudge him into easing his lead foot off the gas as midtown Atlanta at the witching hour blinked into view. The branded monoliths of glass and steel at three o'clock…the high-rimmed bowl of Turner Field at night…the police cruiser at six…

Oh. Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

The thug pointed ahead to an overpass. “Stop under there.”

Larry complied. As the car decelerated, his breathing accelerated, pumping so much oxygen through his veins that his limbs and skull tingled. Pools of sweat oozed from his palms and slicked the steering wheel. He angled toward the breakdown lane underneath the overpass and waited for the cop to emerge from her vehicle.

And he needed to calm the fuck down.

He took a deep, steadying breath. Good. Now be centered. Pretend this is in the flight deck of a 757. That's sixty-five tons of American steel at your fingers, boss man. Yeah. That's right. Breathe. Step up. Good.

A warm breeze curled in through the open sunroof and licked at the sweat on his neck. The policewoman was still in her car, taking her time, and why not? What was her rush? She was probably nearing the end of her shift. If she dragged this out, when she was through she could simply return to the station, clock out, and head home to her family…

“You will behave,” the thug muttered.

The cop commenced her approach, holding a heavy flashlight beside her face. Larry stretched his arm into the backseat, snatched his coat, and put it on. He was going to look presentable. He was going to look professional. And he most definitely was going to behave.

For Marie. For Sean.

“Sir,” said the policewoman, “do you have any idea how fast you were going?”

No, no, he did not, but was honesty the right play here? Would honesty expedite the situation and get him back on the road to the airport? Perhaps…but why risk it? “I'm really sorry, Officer. I'm covering a friend's shift at the last minute and we take off in, like, an hour.” Honesty? Yes. Obfuscation? Absolutely. “I'm sure there's a fine and I'm perfectly willing to pay.”

She shifted her flashlight from his face to that of the sizable passenger and then back to Larry. Her own face appeared ghostly pale, but that just may have been a trick of the ambient light. “Sir, may I see your license, registration, and proof of insurance?”

Larry fumbled for his wallet and handed her the cards. He almost handed her the slip of paper he had tucked behind his driver's license but at the last moment thought better of it. On this slip of paper were the arrival coordinates the old man had given him. He sure wasn't going to risk blabbing his desperate circumstances to some yawn-mouthed cop who, for all he knew, viewed him as yet another black man with a problem abiding by the law.

“Sir, please step out of the vehicle.”

Larry blinked innocently. “Me?”

She stepped aside to allow him to open his door, which he did, all the while flashing a sunshine smile. But she was aiming her flashlight a few inches north of his smile. “Sir, would you mind telling me what happened to your head?”

His head?

What was she talking about?

Oh right, the wad of gauze taped over his bloody gash.

“It's nothing,” he told her. “Actually, it's a funny story. You see—”

“Sir, have you been drinking?”

The overpass rumbled. A heavy truck must have crossed above them.

“Drinking? No. God, no. I have an airplane to fly. This isn't a Halloween costume. I'm a pilot. Really.” He'd intended the comment to come across as charming, but from the scowl on her face, he knew she hadn't been charmed. But at least he could see her face clearly now. No more spectral glow. She was just a medium-sized white woman in her thirties. Bags under her eyes. Little to no makeup. A tiny vertical scar traveled perpendicular to the left corner of her mouth. Maybe it was time for a little honesty. “Look, Officer, I'm sorry. I really am. I must have zoned out or something and I
was
speeding and if you hadn't pulled me over…well, anyway, this kind of thing has never happened to me before. Check my record. I don't even have a parking ticket. I just got…lost in my own thoughts. Whatever I have to pay, I'll pay. OK?”

The cop studied him for a moment…the bandage on his head, the sweat drooling down his cheeks…

He buried the urge to check his wristwatch. He forced himself to remain calm. This would all be over soon and he would be back on his way to the airport and the airplane and he would fly it to the given coordinates and then Marie and Sean would be OK. They had to be. There was no conceivable alternative.

But first he needed this night-weary cop to let him
go.

So he added, calmly: “Please?”

To which she replied, calmly: “Sir, place your hands on top of the vehicle.”

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

Larry placed his hands on top of the vehicle. His fingers neared the sunroof. The policewoman nodded in approval and ambled back to her cruiser to process his license information, call for backup, who knows what. Through the sunroof, Larry had a clear line of sight to the passenger seat, which the thug was reaching underneath to retrieve his large pistol.

Oh God.

“No,” muttered Larry.

The thug rose up, gun in hand, through the opening in the sunroof.

The policewoman was nearing her own car.

“Wait!” Larry shouted—to both of them, really.
“Wait!”

The pistol barked. One of the headlights on the cruiser burst into glass shards. The cop spun around, hand on the butt of her sidearm, as the thug's pistol barked again.

This time, she went down.

“Get in,” the thug said to Larry. “Drive slow.”

Pegasus Air Flight 816, with direct service to Cozumel, Mexico, was scheduled to depart from Gate F-10 at 7:20
A.M.
local time, so when 7:30 came and went and the flight crew still hadn't even begun pre-boarding, the not-yet-passengers milling about the gate area began to get mouthy.

Among the few not-yet-passengers not yet up in arms was an older gentleman in a casual suit, one leg draped over the other so he could prop up his folded
New York Times
and go to work on the Saturday crossword puzzle with his green-ink ballpoint pen. Beside him tussled a pair of twin tykes over the ownership of a plastic dump trunk; between the pair sat a zaftig lad, presumably their older brother, who had a cubic zirconium stud in his chin, although an unfortunate rash of acne made the shiny stud virtually invisible. The older brother had his eyelids shut and his ears plugged with headphones.

One of the twins pointed at the gentleman and asked him what had happened to his neck.

The older gentleman scratched at the Band-Aid covering his barcode tattoo and replied, “Vampires.”

He then glanced at the time on the nearest TV. Captain Walder was late. Soon he'd have to initiate Plan B and he didn't want to initiate Plan B. There had already been too much unnecessary suffering.

Aboard the long and lean Airbus A321, the five-member flight crew, all white-stripes-on-blue, were dawdling on the white-stripes-on-blue comfortable cushions in business class and trading tales of occupational disaster. It was Lucy Snow's turn, Lucy with the bottle-black curls and peppermint breath, and her co-workers anticipated her story with braced grins.

“Cancún,” she said. “The driver of the shuttle hadn't even heard of the place we were supposed to stay and why would he? To get there, he had to turn off the main road and bump-a-bump-a-bump through what might have been an old cornfield—like I know from cornfields—and up ahead there's the place and I swear to Christ, it's the Bates Motel—and this is, I should add, only my third week on the job—and the only person in the shuttle with me and the driver is Eddie Weiss-Majors, may he rest in peace…oh, y'all probably don't remember Eddie…”

“Yeah, I worked with Eddie,” said Francisco, raising his hand. “Poor Eddie.”

Lucy nodded. Yes. Poor Eddie. But poor Francisco too, with his nine children, which made him the go-to man whenever passengers' bawling infants needed mollifying but also made him the most likely suspect in the Case of the Missing Gin Bottles that had Management in such a tizzy that, last week, they had sent out an email to all employees in all-caps. Lucy adored Francisco, adored and pitied him.

“So everyone else is at the Best Western, tanning by the pool, and me and Eddie are on our way to the overflow motel to get our heads chopped off by a Mexican Norman Bates!”

Addison mimed a stabbing motion and then giggled so hard that she hiccuped. Typical Addison, accentuating her youthfulness with mondo good cheer. Lucy paused until the girl's gestures and hysterics wound down and then continued with her tale:

“So the van pulls up to the house—and this is the place—my point is, this is the place that the airline, our beloved airline,
selected
for us to go. This is the place—this hovel—that someone decided, ‘Yeah, we value our employees enough to put them here.' But I'm getting off-topic. I haven't even told you about the beds…”

“Oh, here we go!” Addison tittered.

The other two flight attendants, Maryann and Deja, sat in amused silence. They had already shared their horror stories and were now more than ready to do their jobs and welcome the passengers aboard. But where was Captain Walder? He had a reputation for reliability.

Not that the flight deck was vacant. The copilot Reese Rankin had swaggered aboard a while ago; however, as competent as he was—and Reese Rankin was fond of informing anyone with an X chromosome just how competent he was—neither the FAA nor the airline was about to allow anyone to fly a commercial jet solo.

Someone in authority was going to have to make a decision soon, but no one currently on the plane had anywhere near that kind of authority, especially not poor Maryann, Deja, and Addison; as junior flight crew, their payroll clocks didn't even start until wheels-up. No, the best Lucy could do for them right now was distract them with embellishments:

“OK, so, first of all, the mattress pad in Motel Hell was a sheet of cardboard. I mean, it literally was a box that had been broken flat. Like kicked in. The mattress itself was about two inches thick and when you lay down in it, something inside made a sort of peeling noise, like tape slowly coming off a wall. The sheets were white, but that meant every dried, crusty yellow, green, brown stain stood out.”

“Green?”

“And I haven't even mentioned the blanket—because there was none. Nope. Just a broken box topped by a plate of tape topped by sheets that looked—and smelled—like they'd been dragged up from the sewer before arriving at my bed—which was beside Eddie's bed, by the way, because me and him were forced to share the room. That wasn't the way it was initially reserved, but the room Eddie was supposed to stay in had police tape over the door.”

At which point Reese Rankin bellowed from the flight deck: “I can totally top that!” He strolled into the business-class cabin and wielded his silver thermos to punctuate his point. “Worst hotel experience, right? I've got that story beat and buried.”

“Go ahead,” Lucy challenged.

But Reese never got the chance to share his tale because at that moment, the man they had all been waiting for, Captain Larry Walder, finally made his appearance—and with a bag of doughnuts no less.

“Sorry, folks,” he said. “I'm really sorry. Reese, you still like Boston cream, right?”

He handed the bag to his first officer, who circulated it to the flight crew.

“So what happened, man?” asked Reese, a half-eaten doughnut in one hand and his silver thermos in the other.

“It's a long story. But I made it and that's what matters, right?”

“No, I mean, what happened to your head? The wife slug you with a frying pan or something?”

A leaden silence filled the cabin. Even the sounds of chewing halted. But after a moment Larry offered an abashed grin and replied with a chuckle, “Oh no, no. Nothing like that. I just, you know, walked into a door.”

Lucy raised her cruller in a toast. “Our captain, ladies and gentlemen.”

With that, the two men retired to their seats in the flight deck. Larry fished his wallet out of his pocket. “Actually, it's, um, funny. I've even…ha ha…got this picture of Marie holding a…”

The photograph in question should have been tucked behind his driver's license—and Larry saw the photograph—Marie and Sean in the kitchen wearing lobster pots for helmets and wielding frying pans for rapiers—but his driver's license appeared to be missing. Frowning, Larry tugged open each slot in the wallet. His license had to be somewhere.

He had taken out his wallet at the doughnut kiosk. Could his license have fallen out then? Was it possible, in all of today's tumult, he had actually left it at home? No, he remembered holding it in his hand after the cop pulled him over. She had asked him for it and he had handed it to her along with his registration and insurance card and…

Shit.

Oh shit.

She had been walking his ID cards back to her cruiser when that Neanderthal shot her. Oh Christ. Larry had been in too much shock to even remember to retrieve them and now his personal information with his picture and address and everything was in the hands of a dead cop…

“What is it, chief?” Reese was frowning at him.

“Hm?”

“You were going to show us a photo, I think. Oh wait, is that it?” He pointed at the kitchen photo.

Larry absently handed it to him.

“Well,” said Reese, “would you look at that…almost makes a guy want to settle down and start a family…”

Larry's veins were ice. “Yeah…”

“Anyway, chief, I cycled through our preflight checklist like an hour ago. Departure, route of flight, the whole nine yards. You did sign the flight release, right? Good. Because if you didn't…but I don't have to tell you, right?”

“No…”

Reese popped the rest of his doughnut into his mouth, washed it down with whatever was in his thermos, and added, “So people actually walk into doors, huh? That's a thing?”

Behind them, the stampede of passengers had begun. The familiar racket of footfalls on the carpet, of strangers thumping their carry-ons into headrests or thudding their carry-ons into the overhead bins, of empty chitchat. The familiar reek of perfume, cologne, sweat, fried breakfasts. A child, dark-haired, pigtailed, bounded with excitement toward the flight deck. Her father expertly maneuvered her back toward the aisle. Her mother followed in tow, lumbering like a zombie. The baby at her breast took one look at the inside of the airplane and screeched.

“Listen,” Larry said to Reese, “can you grab me whatever's left from the bag? With the walking into the wall and all that, I forgot to have breakfast. I'll even take a plain.”

“Sure thing, chief.”

Once alone, Larry quickly acted. He only had a few minutes before Reese was bound to return. No throng of passengers, sleepy-eyed or otherwise, would crowd an aisle to delay the path of a person in a pilot's uniform. Licking his lips in nervousness, Larry leaned forward to alter the coordinates in the FMS but decided to first do the other thing. He took what he needed from the footlocker underneath the copilot's seat and then, that task accomplished, went about altering the arrival coordinates in the FMS from their preset destination, Cozumel International Airport, to the new ones he had memorized.