The Moonlit Earth

by Christopher Rice

  She cut their call short by telling him to call her back once he had a plan. Then, once she had laid the phone on the passenger seat, she was able to breathe again, and wipe her sweaty palms, one at a time, against the legs of her khaki pants.

  10

  Playa del Rey

  It wasn’t the first time Megan had been to Dockweiler State Beach. In high school, she and some friends had driven up for a bonfire hosted by a hot guy from Harvard-Westlake whose father ran a movie studio. While the beach had first-rate fire pits, no one had bothered to inform the woefully Caucasian organizers that their guests would be the only white people using them. The party was promptly relocated to a town house in Manhattan Beach after a suitable number of attendees agreed that the mass of red T-shirt-clad black kids walking along the shore were members of a street gang. Only later would Megan learn that Dockweiler had historically been the black community’s official piece of oceanfront real estate, and that their community was understandably upset when LAX became its closest neighbor and planes started roaring over it every few minutes.

  But tonight, the beach was desolate and windswept. There was no one on it to complain about the engine noise from the Cathay Pacific 747 taking to the night sky over the roiling Pacific. She had parked right where her father had told her to; along Vista del Mar Drive. Half a block away was Parker’s compact neighborhood of curving streets, and the Thomas Guide told her the sand dunes off to the left belonged to a butterfly preserve, which concealed the runways for LAX. She hadn’t intended to pay a visit to the last place her brother’s feet had been on American soil, but unexpected was the order of the day.

  After twenty minutes of waiting, Megan saw a shadow in a hooded sweater come jogging along the empty sidewalk. For a few seconds, she thought it couldn’t be Parker, because he didn’t slow down as he approached the Mercedes. Instead, he threw open the passenger side door without stopping and hurled himself into the passenger seat. She caught a glimpse of his profile in the dome light. Then he yanked the door shut, muffling the sound of the waves and casting them both into darkness.

  “Should I drive?” she asked him.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, then he turned around and looked through the rear window. “We’re good.”

  “We’re the only car out here,” she said. “You sure you don’t think I should—”

  “Do whatever you need to do.”

  Which, to her surprise, was not drive at all but stay exactly where they were. She had thought it would be good to have a distraction. But she was far too nervous to avoid hitting curbs and running stoplights, both of which would attract the attention of the media far quicker than the sight of their isolated Mercedes, parked in the space where the halos of the street-lights didn’t quite meet.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?” He sounded genuinely confused. She didn’t blame him.

  “For what you said about him on the news.”

  “Well … you did a pretty good job yourself this morning.”

  “And now they’re using it to convict him.”

  “It was a good idea at the time.”

  “It wasn’t mine,” she said.

  “Whose was it?”

  “Lucas.”

  Her father turned away from this name and focused his attention on the whitecaps. “You see his statement?” he asked.

  I wanted to kill him over it, she thought. But she couldn’t share these words with him. There was a block there. As angry as she was at her cousin, there was some ingrained part of her that kept her from trashing him to anyone. Anyone besides Cameron, and he hadn’t called.

  “I think …” She hesitated and her father turned to look at her. It was too dark to see his face. “I think they’re trying to make it easier on themselves.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This morning, Mom was talking about him like he was dead.”

  “I guess that’s one way of doing this.”

  “Yeah? How are you doing it?”

  “Pretty much what you saw on TV,” he answered, ignoring the bite in her tone. “Cameron hanging with terrorists—come on, we both know it’s horseshit. They even know it’s horseshit. The whole investigation’s being run by goddamn cable news.”

  “I asked the FBI about the security-camera footage.”

  “What did you ask them?”

  “Why they had released it. They didn’t. At least it didn’t sound that way.”

  “Sure. It was leaked. Maybe the Hong Kong guys thought it was a good idea. What else did you talk to the FBI about?”

  She could hear a wary note in this last question, and it angered her. Was he questioning her ability to defend Cameron? Surely he wasn’t about to give notes on her effort, not when he had bowed out of any opportunity to contribute to her efforts in any area of her life.

  “They asked me if I knew who that man was,” she said. “The Middle Eastern guy on the tape.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said I’d never seen him before in my life. And they could ask me again as many times as they wanted, and the answer wouldn’t change. Because it was the truth. I have no idea. None.”

  There was a long silence, and she felt a giddy swell in her chest. Giddy because it seemed like her father approved of what she had told the investigators, and this pleased her far more than she wanted it to. “What did they ask you?”

  “Same stuff, pretty much. But, uh … I had an idea.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About who the guy might be.”

  She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t, so she said, “Did you tell them?”

  “They were going to find out anyway,” he said. “A couple months ago, Cameron worked a charter flight to Riyadh with some rich Saudis.”

  “With who?”

  “Some rich Saudis.”

  “I got that part. Who ran the charter?”

  “Peninsula.”

  “Like on a corporate jet or something?”

  “No. On a triple-seven.”

  “Jesus. How many Saudis were there?”

  “He didn’t say, but he figured they were in business with Zach Holder, the guy who runs the airline. They had to be to justify burning that much fuel. Apparently Holder does a lot of business in Saudi Arabia so he’s got a lot of Saudis to keep happy. Only reason Cameron was working the flight was because one of the Saudis had requested both the flight attendants from the ad Cameron did for the airline. He figured whoever it was was sweet on Jenny and trying to cover up for it.”

  “Jenny?”

  “The female flight attendant. From the ad. The one who’s standing next to—”

  “Yeah. I got it. Thanks.”

  “He didn’t tell you about it?”

  “There’s a lot he didn’t tell me, apparently. I was too busy chewing his ear off.” She realized her father didn’t know what she was referring to, so she added, “I got fired and there was this big—”

  “I know. He told me.”

  “I’m glad somebody knew everything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “You getting fired. It didn’t sound … fair.”

  Had she driven two hours to discuss the concept of fairness with her deadbeat dad? Focus, she told herself. “What did he say about the charter flight afterward?” she asked.

  “Not much.”

  “He works a charter flight to a hostile Middle Eastern country and he doesn’t have anything to say about it afterward?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe he did and you weren’t listening.”

  “I was listening, all right? He didn’t say anything. Look, I’m sorry I told them, but this thing wasn’t a secret. I’m sure it was on their books at Peninsula. The FBI would have found it eventually.”

  “Maybe they would have found it after he had been found. And then he could have explained it to them. To us.”

  “He doesn’t have anything to
explain,” her father said. He was trying to keep the impatience out of his voice, and it sounded like there was some part of him that wanted to talk down to her but knew better than to try.

  The silence between them became so uncomfortable, she would not have been surprised if he had taken the opportunity to get out of the car. But he stayed put.

  “The night he left, his phone rang while I was with him and suddenly I was looking at your face. He didn’t tell me he was living with you. The FBI told me that today. He just said you were speaking again. I asked him why.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “You first.”

  He turned his gaze straight ahead and sucked in a long, deep breath, as if his answer involved complex math, rather than mere memory of recent events. “He called me out of the blue and asked me if we could meet for coffee. There’d been a few emails over the years but he’d never really asked for anything. We met for coffee. …” He fell silent. Was he fighting tears? It was too dark to see his eyes. “He said he wanted a relationship. He said the past was the past and that life was too short for him to be angry.”

  “Sounds a little trite for him.”

  “I thought the same thing. I figured something had happened, but he didn’t want to talk about it. I thought, maybe, I don’t know … HIV? Whatever. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to ruin the moment, I guess.”

  “Was this before or after the charter flight?”

  “Before. What? You think something happened to him on that flight?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you think something happened to him too, right? He was different, right? I mean, what did he tell you when you asked why he was in touch with me again?” She was thinking exactly those things, in almost exactly those words.

  “He told me he was on a return flight from Asia and they were in an area between Hawaii and L.A. called no-man’s-land because there isn’t a safe diversionary airport within easy landing distance. He told me they lost one engine and the pilot thought they might lose the other one. He said they came so close to death he had to take stock of his relationships.” For the first time she told the story without trying to make it sound convincing, and this came as a relief.

  “Well, he told you more than he told me.”

  “Only problem is it’s a lie. Return flights from Asia don’t go anywhere near Hawaii. They follow something called the Great Circle Route, which means they go north over Japan and then come south along Alaska and the West Coast. It saves time and fuel. But he had told me about no-man’s-land once when he first started flying and it scared the pants off me, so when he was cornered, he used it.”

  “He still told you more than he told me. I didn’t say any of it was true.”

  “That’s real cute, Dad.”

  It was the first time she had called him that in fifteen years, and they both went still at the sound of it, as if the single muttered syllable had caused an echo in their leather-padded cell.

  “So … what? You guys met for coffee and then he asked to move in?”

  “No,” her father answered, sounding suddenly disappointed by her sarcasm. “We had a few meals—well, we agreed to sit down for a meal every time he got back from a flight. But then he mentioned that his roommate got laid off and was moving back to Ohio. He said he couldn’t afford the rent on his own, so I told him he could crash at my place for a while.”

  “So he wasn’t living with you. He was just crashing.”

  “I haven’t asked him to move out.”

  “What does Callie think?”

  “Callie’s got her own place. Besides, he spends most of his time sleeping off jet lag when he’s even here. He’d been playing with his schedule so that his layovers are actually here instead of over there, which means he spends more time in Hong Kong most months than he does here. I don’t know how it works. I’m just saying, aside from the storage unit, he hasn’t been a drain or anything.”

  A drain. The injustice of this description might have sparked her anger, but she was too distracted by the offhand mention of a storage unit.

  “What storage unit?”

  “He asked if he could move some stuff into my storage unit in Culver City. I gave him access. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “Yeah, well, at least he’s not a drain.”

  “Bad choice of words. Sorry. But can I ask why you’re hammering away at this? I mean, you don’t think lying about this domestic stuff means he’s gotten into something bad over there.”

  “He’s already in something bad over there.”

  “He’s on tape with a Middle Eastern guy. Period. That’s it.”

  “He hasn’t called. That means one of three things: he’s been kidnapped, he’s dead, or he’s guilty of something.”

  “Three things? Only three, huh? Is that how simple life is now? Where are you getting all this stuff from? Your cousin?”

  “I’m getting it from all sides, all right?”

  “Not from me.”

  “Yeah, well, I called you, remember?”

  Her father let out a small grunt and looked out the window again. A British Airways 747 had just dissolved into a trio of blinking lights as it banked north.

  “What else did he say when you asked him why he was speaking to me again?”

  “He said I should give you another shot.”

  “I’m not out to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “Well, don’t campaign for it or anything.”

  Maybe he was just being respectful. Or maybe she didn’t seem to want it enough. Now a Singapore Airlines jet crested the bank of sand dunes off to the left, and made a slow lumbering ascent over the whitecaps.

  “Do you have to listen to this at your house all the time?”

  “The sound blows south mostly. Or at least that’s what the real estate agents say.” She heard him turning against the leather seat before she saw that he was looking at her. “So … if you want to know more about that charter, you should ask your cousin. I mean, Lucas is the one who got him the job at Peninsula in the first place, right? Holder’s his client, so he could probably ask him, at the very least.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure Zach Holder will want to be involved in all of this even more. They’re already implying Cameron wanted to bring down one of his planes. Thanks. I’ll get on the horn with him right away.”

  She didn’t sound like a woman; she sounded like a teenage girl. She had a close friend in San Francisco who had gotten sober and come out of his first AA meetings spouting all manner of 12-step truisms to anyone who would listen. The one that had stuck with her the most was the belief that heavy drinkers stop maturing at the age when they start abusing alcohol. Was a similar effect possible with people who walked out on you years before? If you ran into them again, did you revert back to being the age you were when they left?

  Her father didn’t bother with some bogus excuse. He just stepped out of the car. But he turned, holding the door open with one hand, flipping his hood up with the other.

  “It was good seeing you, Megan.”

  When he saw the look on her face, he dropped his eyes to the pavement and pushed the car door shut. Maybe he was wounded that she didn’t say anything back. She hoped not. She hoped he had heard how absurd his parting words sounded, given the circumstances. A little embarrassment might do him good. She would certainly trade that feeling for any of the others that were coursing through her system.

  Traffic was much lighter on the way back, and she caught herself doing eighty-five a few times before she left L.A. County.

  She distracted herself with simple math. That morning, Lucas had told them the explosion took place at six thirty in the morning local time, nine thirty at night in Hong Kong. After a couple of minutes, she had come up with a simple formula to calculate the time change. Add three hours to whatever time it was on the West Coast, then reverse a.m. and p.m., and you had the time in Hong Kong. She had never had to calculate the time difference befo
re because Cameron usually made a point to call when he knew she would be available. One of those times was right after he landed, just after lunchtime on the West Coast.

  She needed a new game if she was going to avoid her dread at the thought of returning to the safe house. The feeling was so acute it washed away the aftereffects of her reunion with her father, a reunion that had been nowhere near as dramatic as she had expected it to be. Maybe it was their easy, unexpected sarcasm that had greased the wheels, or maybe the events of the day had exhausted them both.

  Someone needed to drive by her house and see if there were still reporters out front. Then she could go home. And all would be right with the world for about the next three to four hours. Before it all went to hell again with the first ringing phone.

  She was scrolling through her phone’s directory with one hand, in search of her new landlady’s number, when she remembered she actually had an assistant. Unless, of course, Lucas had fired the woman as punishment for Megan’s insubordinate behavior.

  Hannah answered after the first ring. She agreed to Megan’s request with breathy, dramatic enthusiasm. Never had someone been so pleased to be enlisted in a headline-making story. It reminded her of the strange light in the girl’s eyes when she had come into the office the day before to inform her that Lucas was waiting for her on the sidewalk, visibly upset. The girl loved drama.

  The phone call. She had almost forgotten about it. It had turned Lucas into a smiling robot, desperate to leave her all by herself just moments after his big reveal.

  You’re punishing him, she said to herself. Don’t start going after Lucas just because he patronized you this afternoon. But she couldn’t resist. If the feds could sift through Cameron’s every move and affectation prior to his departure for Hong Kong, she could distract herself from the wide swath of the 405 by taking a good hard look at her cousin. Because she had to admit, Lucas’s behavior outside her new office had been far more strange and out of character than Cameron’s actions at the party.