Riders on the Storm (17 page)

“I think I do.”

“Can you prove it?”

“No, not yet.”

“Is that person still in town?”

“Yes. He's a psychopath. But I just promised Gordon that I was going to get the man who did this to him. One way or another.”

“You sound sure of yourself.”

“I am.”

“Aren't you afraid?”

“Do I look afraid?”

“Well,” she said, “since you brought up the subject, you actually do.”

I laughed. “You're a very perceptive woman.”

Colgan Air Services was set right on the edge of the city limits. It was standard for the kind of business you usually saw attached to larger airports. Here you could rent aircraft, take flight instruction, fuel up, use a hangar, tie down your craft, or even take a nap in a small room Billy Colgan made available.

Billy was a short and short-fused Irisher who had enough hair on his arms to make an ape envious. I'd never seen him in long-sleeved shirts. Maybe all that hair needed to be aired out.

You walked past a row of tied-down small craft to reach a round yellow metal building that housed the office as well as one of two hangars. Billy's wife Mara was one of the fastest typists I've ever seen. She was plain until she smiled. Then she was striking. She paused in her assault on her typewriter keys to see me and smile. Like Billy and all his employees she wore a tan short-sleeved shirt with Colgan Air above the breast pocket.

“Hi, Sam. Billy'll be glad to see you. He wants his chance to win back that forty dollars he lost last time you and Thibodeau and Father Brogan played poker. But I guess Brogan won even more than you did.”

“He cheated.”

She had a cheerful, bawdy laugh. “Right, Sam. A priest who cheats at poker.”

“He does.”

I'd been trying to convince our revolving group of players that Father Brogan was a cheater since he'd joined us a year ago. They refused to believe it but it was true.

“That's the kind of talk that'll send you to hell for sure.”

“I've already booked passage.”

She was still smiling. “A priest who cheats at poker,” she said as she raised Billy on the intercom.

Billy came around his desk as if he was going to grab me and throw me to the ground. He was best known to the boys of Catholic school as the all-time arm-wrestling champion. This had started in third grade when he'd beaten a fifth-grader. You didn't want to be around him when he was drunk because the fun would stop at some point while he insisted that every male in the room arm-wrestle him. Arm-wrestling is interesting for about one minute and four seconds.

“Great t'see ya, Sam. Siddown.”

The flying he'd picked up in high school. It had been called Parker Air then. Billy had convinced old man Parker to let him work here and in between moving planes around, scrubbing toilets, and watching Parker give flying lessons—sometimes to comely young women—he got the fever. No college for him. He got his pilot's license and started flying cargo out of St. Paul and then when old man Parker decided to retire, Billy managed to get enough of a bank loan to make a serious down payment on the place. Old man Parker had let him pay off the rest from profits.

After we were seated, Billy said, “Poor Will, huh?”

“He didn't do it.”

Genuine surprise played on his broad face. “You might be the only one who thinks so.”

“There're some others.”

“I'm getting the sense that this isn't a social visit.”

“Afraid it isn't, Billy. I want to know a few things about Lon Anders.”

“You think
Anders
had something to do with this?”

“I can't say yes and I can't say no at this point. That's why I need to ask you some questions.”

“Before you start, Sam, Anders is a good customer.”

“I just want to ask a couple of simple questions.”

He shrugged. “As long as I don't think I'm violating a confidence.”

“Fair enough. How often does he fly?”

“About average for my business. Two, three times a month.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Half and half or so. He loves taking his ladies up and scaring the shit out of them. Getting into dives and pretending he's stalled. Things like that.”

“He ever get in trouble showing off like that?”

“No. But I've warned him plenty of times. He's a good pilot but not a great one. One of these days he's going to be clowning around like that and not be able to get control back.”

“Ever see him take up Valerie Donovan?”

“Bad question.”

“Cathy Vance?”

“Another bad question.”

“How about where he goes?”

“He's got a thing about Denver. Shacks up there a lot.”

“Ever leave the country?”

“You sure ask a lot of bad questions.”

“So he does leave the country.”

“You said that, I didn't. And you're only guessing.”

“I'm trying to save Will here, Billy.”

Now he waited me out. “Will's our friend, Billy.”

“Not mine.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He's never been especially friendly to me, Sam. And I'm talking way, way back. I think it was because of my old man.”

Billy's old man, along with two other of his Navy buddies from the big war, had stuck up a bank. Even in the Hills that had marked the family as outsiders.

“He ever say anything directly?”

“He didn't have to, Sam. I'm not exactly an idiot, man. I can tell.”

“So you won't help him even though he's innocent.”

“You have to be careful about people saying they're innocent, Sam. Just before he started doing time my old man told me
he
was innocent, too. No offense, but I gotta get back to work here.”

I joked a little with Mara on my way out. I should've gone straight to the parking area but I veered right and went to the stand-alone hangar.

Marv Serbosek was working on a newer model vintage Piper Cub. He stood on a three-step ladder. An ear-numbing version of
Proud Mary
with Ike and Tina Turner was keeping him entertained. The noise bounced off the metal walls.

I had to yell twice to catch his attention.

Marv had been in a beard-growing contest at the county fair last summer. He had yet to unburden himself of the gray-flecked reddish thing that reached the upper pockets of his overalls.

“Hey, McCain. How's it goin'?”

“I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

“Sure. If I can.” His mother and my mother had been longtime members of the local Catholic church. It was the only connection Marv and I had but I hoped it was enough.

“You know Lon Anders, right?”

“Mr. Anders? Sure. What about him?”

“He ever fly out of the country?”

“Oh, yeah. Two, three times a year he goes to Mexico. Guess a friend of his has a house down there. Why?”

“Well, I was talking to Billy and he didn't want to give me any information about Anders.”

The long, narrow face grew taut and the brown eyes showed fear. “Hell, I might be in trouble now. You shoulda told me that, Sam.”

“I won't say anything to Billy if you don't. I wasn't trying to get you into any trouble, Marv. And I'm sure you won't be in any trouble if we keep this between ourselves.”

He managed to mumble agreement but I could see that now we didn't have any connection at all. He felt betrayed and even if I was pretty sure Billy would never find out I didn't blame Marv at all for feeling used.

T
HAT AFTERNOON WE TOOK THE GIRLS TO A MOVIE.

There was only one we were under sacred obligation to see and that was
Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
. On the way to the theater Kate was so rhapsodic about seeing it that Nicole finally started singing to shut her up.

Twenty minutes into the movie Kate climbed up on my lap and went to sleep.

The movie was only one of the subjects we discussed when we used the outdoor grill in the back yard to make burgers. I even made a couple burgers myself and nobody died.

In the long twilight everything slowed down and quieted down and for once the melancholy I usually felt at dusk eluded me. It was touching to hear the girls slowly slip into exhaustion. To hear Kate
this subdued was a revelation. She asked her sister to tell her the rest of the movie when they went to bed that night. Mary was quiet as usual. She always joked that who needed TV when you had the two girls. She loved watching them together. So did I.

I had to carry Kate inside. She was out. Mary revived her for the bath and the good-nights and the prayers and then the lights-out.

“I am so lucky to have them,” she said when she came back and sat next to me.

“You sure are.”

I got a bottle of Hamm's from the fridge and went into the living room and we watched a rerun of an old Jackie Gleason series,
The Honeymooners
. Gleason was always good but the woman who played his loving and lovely wife and the guy who played his bumbling buddy were just as good. The desperation of their lives reminded me of growing up in the Hills. All those men back from the big war trying to work their way out of poverty while their wives cut every corner they could while trying to raise their kids right. The show was sad fun but fun nonetheless.

I grabbed the phone when it rang.

“I'm trying to reach Sam McCain.”

“That's me. Help you with something?”

“My name's Cliff Donlon. Tim Duffy's a friend of mine from bowling league. I was talking to him and he gave me this number and said I should call you. I worked for Steve Donovan. I did not work for Anders.”

“That's an interesting distinction since they were full partners.”

“I was with Steve from the beginning. He changed a lot when Anders came along. I almost quit when Al Carmichael left. Al was a great guy. Anders ran him out and Steve let it happen. But I stayed. Since Steve is gone I want to talk to somebody about something that's been going on there ever since Anders came.”

“And what would that be?”

“I'd rather meet for an early breakfast. I need to be at work by eight so how about meeting me at McDonald's at seven? The one on the east side.”

“I'll be there, Mr. Donlon. And thank you very much for calling.”

M
C
D
ONALD
'
S WAS STILL SOMETHING OF A NOVELTY FOR OUR TOWN.

A local land baron had a young daughter who'd made him drive her to Iowa City every week to pick up a huge sack of burgers and fries which would be stored in the family fridge and then heated up whenever the teenager desired. The local land baron decided it would not only save him from driving into Iowa City for the stuff, it would be downright profitable if he owned the franchise himself. Instant McDonald's.

Donlon waved me over, a redhead of forty or so in a gray worker's uniform, a long, wiry body and a pair of savvy blue eyes that were street-smart and withholding of judgment on everything that passed before them. He had a quick, iron handshake.

I set my thousand calories down across from his and sat down. We had to speak up to be heard above the packed house.

“The wife says this stuff puts the weight on me. But you can't prove it by my scale. I weigh about what I did when I was in high school. She also says it's a lot cheaper to eat breakfast at home. But I'm addicted to this stuff.”

“It's pretty good.”

“I'm kinda in a hurry to get to work so I'll get right to it.” Quick sip of coffee. “I was one of Steve's first employees. His dad had been in the Navy and so had I. Steve liked that and so we got along very well. Till Anders came into the picture. He got rid of Al first of all and Al had been just as nice to all of us as Steve had been. Steve gradually got to be pretty much like Anders. And Anders was making most of the decisions. You could tell that, everybody could. Steve'd start to say something and Anders'd just interrupt him. Sometimes Steve would just take it but sometimes they'd argue right in front of everybody. Or they'd go into one of their offices and then they'd
really
argue. I missed the old Steve and so did everybody else who worked there. Then Anders made me start making these runs for him.”

“What kind of runs?”

“To this cabin he had that nobody was supposed to know about. He said he'd fire me if I ever told anybody about what I was doing.”

“Doing?”

“Yeah, loading up maybe twenty of our shipping boxes—the medium-sized ones—and then running them out to the cabin. I also took along packing material for shipping. I thought it was strange. We have our own shipping department and those women are damned good at what they do. So I was always kinda curious about it. Then Steve gets killed.”