Chute Roll

by Sigmund Brouwer

  There was one last thing I could try. I could sneak to her house and try to speak to her without being seen. Only problem was, I didn’t know her address.

  I called the flight school. No surprise, Spike answered. It seemed like he lived there.

  “Spike,” I said, “can you go to the files and find an address for me?”

  “What’s it worth?” he asked over the telephone.

  “Well…” I didn’t know what to say. His answer surprised me.

  “Fifty bucks,” he said.

  “Fifty bucks?”

  “If you don’t want to get it yourself, don’t worry about it. If you have time to waste, you can always come out here yourself.”

  “Fifty bucks,” I said. “Get me Sabella Scanelli’s address. It should be on the forms she signed to sky dive.”

  As I waited, I thought about Spike. Funny how little things say so much about a person. He was charging me fifty bucks for help.

  Spike got on the phone a few minutes later. “201 Palmetto Place.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Forget the thanks. Give me the fifty next time you see me. Or else.”

  I was tired of threats. I hung up on him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I found Sabella Scanelli’s address without any problem. My problem instead was the front gates. She lived in a mansion, set far back from the road.

  I parked my motorcycle on the street.

  My watched showed eight o’clock. It was dark, and my shadow from the streetlights was long in front of me as I walked to the gates.

  I stood, wondering what to do. I mean, you just don’t knock on the gate and expect someone to answer the door.

  “Who are you,” a voice said. It sounded like someone was talking through a tin can.

  I finally saw the speaker behind the leaves of a bush. On the other side of the gate. Right beside it was a video camera I had not noticed before.

  “I’m a friend of Sabella Scanelli’s.”

  “What is your name?” the voice asked.

  “Jefff Nichols.”

  “Is she expecting you?”

  “No,” I said. “Can you tell her it’s important?”

  No answer.

  I stood there longer. Much longer. I hoped the person on the other end of the speaker had actually gone to look for Sabella. For all I knew, I could be standing here all night.

  I looked around as I waited.

  A driveway on the other side of the gate led all the way up to the mansion. It was a three-storey building, with big windows.

  The grounds of the mansion were bigger than a dozen football fields. There were palm trees all over. There were small ponds. There were statues lit by floodlights.

  It looked like a nice place to live. But it wouldn’t be worth it if you had to be part of the mob to live there. Or maybe to die there.

  I heard footsteps.

  Way ahead, a man was walking down the driveway toward me. In the dark, I couldn’t see his face. All I could see was the outline of his body. It was a big body.

  The footsteps grew louder as he got closer.

  I felt chills. If Mr. Scanelli was part of the mob, there was a good chance this guy was too. I remembered the movies I had seen about gangsters. Would this guy pull out a machine gun and spray me with bullets?

  Closer. Closer. His face was completely in shadow. He didn’t say anything.

  Finally, about ten feet away, he stepped into a pool of light from an electric lamp near the driveway.

  I nearly fell backward in surprise.

  It was the man with the gold tooth. The man who had told me he would kill me if I tried to help Sabella.

  I remembered what the gold tooth guy had said to me about Mr. Scanelli. His trouble is that he thought he could outsmart us. That we wouldn’t know who did the singing. What he doesn’t know is that we have someone close to him.

  That someone close was this man with the gold tooth.

  “Didn’t listen, did you kid?” He pulled a pistol from his jacket. “Listen now.”

  He pointed the gun at my head and pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  He dropped the gun and laughed at me. “Next time, expect the sound of a bullet.”

  He lifted the gun and pointed it at my head again. “You’ve got five seconds to run. Otherwise I pull the trigger again. And this time, it won’t click dry.”

  I ran.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A block away from the Scanelli mansion, a pair of headlights turned on behind me. The lights were so bright, they blinded me in my motorcyle rear-view mirror.

  I gave it gas.

  The headlights stayed with me.

  I turned hard at the next corner.

  The headlights stayed with me.

  The streets were winding streets, up in the hills. I couldn’t go too fast.

  I also had no idea where I was going. All I wanted was to keep distance between me and the headlights.

  I turned corner after corner, trying to lose the headlights. Nothing worked.

  Three minutes later, I hit a dead end. I could see where the street ended a hundred yards ahead. I spun my bike around and faced the headlights.

  For a moment, I stayed where I was. I gunned the motorcyle engine and got ready.

  I knew what I had to do. I had to run at the car as fast as possible. I had to fake going one way, but take the other way. Once I was past the car, I could escape.

  The car screeched to a stop about fifty yards away.

  Both doors opened.

  In the glare of the headlights, I saw very little. There was a man behind each door, facing me.

  “Freeze!” a voice shouted. “FBI!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next morning, I got to the flight school early. I went into the office and checked to see when Sabella was scheduled to jump. She had booked a flight at ten o’clock with Smitty.

  Smitty was a good guy and a good pilot. He was in his thirties. He was tall and skinny and was always smiling.

  I knew which plane Smitty would be taking. That helped. I had a little under two hours to get ready.

  **

  When Sabella stepped into the back of the airplane, I was waiting for her.

  “Jeff,” she said. “What’s this? I had booked the flight just for myself.”

  “We need to talk,” I told her. I strapped myself in the seat beside her.

  Smitty, in the front, fired up the airplane engines.

  “If you’re here to talk, why are you in your jump suit?” she asked. “Why do you have your chute?”

  “That’s part of what we have to talk about.”

  Smitty had a headset on and was talking to the radar crew as he taxied the airplane onto the runway. Smitty couldn’t hear us, so I raised my voice above the noise of the engines.

  “Aren’t you worried that someone might try to kill you again?” I asked.

  “It’s none of your business,” she said. Her dark eyes became darker with anger.

  “Yes it is,” I told her. “There’s a guy who works for your Dad. A guy with a gold tooth.”

  “How do you know?” She looked a little frightened.

  “Last night he told me he would get rid of me. That’s why this is my business.”

  She stared at me. The airplane began to pick up speed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. I didn’t really hear her, though. I was reading her lips because the airplane was loud and shaking.

  I moved my head closer to her. Neither of us had on our helmets yet, so we were able to shout in each other’s ears.

  “I know your father is part of the mob,” I told her. “The mob knows he’s talked to the FBI. The mob wants to get rid of you for it.”

  I explained everything to her. The airplane reached 5,000 feet by the time I finished.

  I was surprised she didn’t look scared. I had just told her that she was going to be murdered. Today.

  “Jeff,” she said a few minute
s later. “All of this is a risk my father and I discussed. He hates what he does. He wants out. He was getting ready for us to leave the country and live under different names. The only way the FBI would help was if he gave them some information first.”

  She shook her head sadly. “Ronnie? The guy with the gold tooth? He’s been like part of the family for years. I would have never guessed that he would do this to us. What a pity.”

  We were now at 7,000 feet. The desert was open and wide below us.

  I turned sideways in my seat and shook her shoulders. “Sabella. Hellooooo. What do you mean, a pity? They want to kill you. When you jump.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You already told me.”

  “And?”

  “We’re marked now. No one escapes once the mob puts the word out for a hit.” she said. Sadness filled her face. “And we were only a week away from leaving the country .”

  “You’re just giving up,” I said.

  She turned to face me. “You want to know why I jump? Freedom. I can’t help what my father did with the mob. With all that money, we’re both like birds in a cage. I can’t leave him, though. He’s my father. I love him. With my mother dead a long time ago, he needs me. In the sky is the only place I feel free.”

  “What does that have to do with giving up,” I said.

  “If I jump, I’m not giving up. If I have to die, I’m going to do it my way. Not running and hiding like some mouse in a dark room.”

  “You’re sure you want to jump?” I said.

  “You’re not stopping me,” she said.

  “Alright then,” I told her. “But I’m jumping with you. Free fall.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  In parachuting, there are other events besides target. During free fall, the time without the chute open, teams make different shapes in the air, with the divers holding hands and moving around.

  It didn’t look that strange then, when I jumped with my partner. And I knew I’d have to worry about what it looked like. Ronnie, the gold-toothed guy, had said the chute-roll would happen today. That meant a pilot and an airplane would be diving out of the sky to get Sabella. That meant the pilot — whoever he was — would be watching.

  As always, the ground hardly seemed to move. From 8,000 feet above, the free-fall part seems much slower than it is.

  My partner and I twisted and turned together. I made sure I held on tight to my partner’s wrists.

  I held off on pulling the ripcord. A chute-roll could only happen if the parachute was open. The longer I waited, the better.

  I felt the air push at the skin and flesh of my face. Sometimes, when I’m in a goofy mood, I let my lips flap in the wind and I make goo-goo noises. This time, though, was not a time to be goofy.

  Six thousand feet and still dropping like an anvil.

  Then I saw the airplane. It was a speck, but growing larger.

  I waited.

  Five thousand feet.

  The airplane headed straight for us.

  I pushed away, yanking my partner’s rip cord. The chute trailed out, then opened. I fell from my partner, still in free fall.

  I kept looking up, get farther and farther away. I needed to get us much space between us as possible. Above me, the figure dangling from the parachute got smaller and smaller.

  The plane came closer. I knew that plane. It was the one that Spike always flew.

  There was maybe two thousand feet between us when I finally pulled my own ripcord.

  One…two…three… Bang! My chute jerked me with the feeling of safety that I loved.

  I fell at an angle. I had to twist to look past my chute and above at what was happening.

  It made me sick.

  The airplane zoomed in on the parachute above me. Like a hawk closing in for the kill. It flew just over the parachute. Like a twist of smoke in wind, the parachute swirled and sucked, wrapping around the small figure so high above me. There was no chance for the backup chute to open. No chance to release the main chute.

  Then the figure grew as it gained speed.

  Three seconds later, it fell past me. I didn’t have to look up to watch it. I stared downward as it dove toward the desert floor.

  “Good-bye Sabella,” I said. I knew I would never see her again.

  Thirty seconds later, there was a little plop of dust. Just like in the roadrunner cartoons, when the coyote falls and falls and falls and falls and finally hits.

  From where I was, floating in the air, I saw it all.

  A long black car started to speed out into the desert. Sabella’s bodyguards.

  But a brown car jumped out from behind some brush in a gulley. It cut the black car off. Two men jumped out of the brown car and waved the black car to a stop. It was the brown car that had followed me and Sabella from my apartment. It was the brown car that had trapped me last night.

  The FBI.

  They were taking over the sudden horrible death of Sabella Scanelli.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I went to Sabella Scanelli’s funeral two days later. All of us from the flight school did. All of us except for Spike. Spike was in jail. The FBI planned to charge him with the murder of Sabella Scanelli. Spike also confessed to wrecking her parachute on the day I saved her. But Spike was not telling them who hired him. Spike had wisely decided time in jail was better than getting murdered by the mob for squealing.

  The funeral took place on a windy, rainy day. Las Vegas hardly has rainy days, but this was one of them. Grey weather for a grey day.

  The grey matched the way I felt. Sad. I think Sabella and I might have become more than friends, but we’d never have the chance.

  “Kid,” a voice said to me. Ronnie Gold-Tooth stepped away from a bunch of other guys in suits. He stepped close to me and lowered his voice.

  “Smart move on your part kid. You see how the mob takes care of things. You make sure you keep your mouth shut.”

  “You too,” I said. “Keep your mouth shut. The gold tooth looks stupid.”

  He frowned. Then he laughed.

  “Brave, but stupid.” He cuffed me across the head. “You’re lucky I like you kid.”

  I didn’t like him.

  He walked back to his friends. It would have been fun to tell him what I knew from the FBI guys. Because of Mr. Scanelli’s help, the FBI was ready to close in on Ronnie and a bunch of the others. Mr. Scanelli was leaving the country tomorrow. The FBI would make the arrests as soon as Mr. Scanelli was safe.

  Under the open sky that had been such a friend to Sabella, I stood apart from the other flight school people. I listened to the quiet words of the preacher as the casket was lowered into the grave. It had been a closed casket funeral. Everyone knew that bodies don’t look pretty after smashing into the ground at 120 miles per hour.

  The preacher finished.

  We began moving away.

  A tall man in an expensive suit put his hand on my arm and stopped me.

  “I’m Franco Scanelli,” he said. The two bodyguards I had met in the desert stayed right at his elbows.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Mr. Scanelli had a lean, handsome face. I saw where Sabelli had gotten her beauty.

  “You’re Jeff Nichols?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “It’s too bad we live in different worlds. From what I understand, it would be worth my while to know a fine young man like you.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  He extended his hand. I took it. We shook.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  “Nice meeting you, sir.”

  We pulled our hands apart. He walked away with the two bodyguards. I stared after them.

  I kept my right hand closed. Mr. Scanelli had slipped a piece of paper into it as we shook hands. He had taken a big risk to do that with the mob bodyguards right there. The least I could do was wait until I got away from the funeral to read it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I rode my motorcycle fa
r out into the desert. Riding with the wind in my face and the wide open flats around me feels nearly as free as sky-diving. I didn’t want to open the note. I had a good guess who had written it. I didn’t know if I was ready for it. If it was more than goodbye, I would be sad. If it was less than goodbye, I would be sad.

  Finally, at the end of a lonely two-lane stretch of highway, I pulled over. I set my helmet against a big rock. I sat on my helmet and leaned back against the rock.

  I opened the note.

  I was right. It was from Sabella Scanelli.

  Jeff, if you’re wondering how all this got started, it’s because I watched you for a long time at the flight school. We never talked much. I couldn’t. They don’t let birds out of gold cages. But I saw how you are and always wanted to talk get to know you. That’s why I came to your house for a ride to the flight school. If anyone would help, it was you. I really wanted to ask you for help, but at the last minute, I changed my mind. I didn’t want you to get hurt.

  But you helped anyway. And because you helped, I may never see you again. The worst part of starting a new life is not leaving the money and the mansion. I hated that cage. The worst part is not having a chance to see you again.

  I’m sorry.

  Thanks for setting me free. Sabella.

  I folded the paper and stared at the sky.

  No, Sabella couldn’t return. To the mob, she was dead. They could never find out she was alive. They could never find out how we had fooled them.

  I’d jumped with a dummy in her flight suit. The inside of the dummy was filled with rocks so it would fall like a real person.

  The night before, when I’d talked to the FBI, we had come up with the plan. After the dummy hit the ground, the FBI guys had to stop the bodyguards from getting there.

  Sabella had stayed hidden in the airplane. Not even Smitty knew she was there, under some old canvas in the back. After Smitty landed and word got out that Sabella had died, there was so much confusion at the airport that it had been easy for other FBI guys in a delivery truck to sneak her away.

  I don’t know, of course, how she had managed to get the note to Mr. Scanelli. Maybe the FBI had helped. Maybe she’d found another way. It was a chance on her part. The mob could never find out she was alive. I was happy she had taken the chance for me. Happy the note had been more than a simple good-bye. Happy she had trusted me with her life. Again.

  And I was sad. I would never see her again.

  I ripped up the note and let it float away in the desert wind. The pieces of paper dipped and rose in the wind. Almost like birds. Flying from an opened cage.