Dynamite Road

by Andrew Klavan

  “So—so we reached her house after a while. And, well, there was no one, no one around anywhere. And she opened the door and I…I just pushed—I just pushed right in behind her. That’s right. Right in. And I—I grabbed her. And, well, let me tell you, she—she pleaded with me. Oh yes, Mr. Weiss. It was terrible to hear. She was—she was on her knees, on her knees begging me, pleading with me. Crying. That’s when, you know, she told me…” He licked his lips again. Swallowed hard. His fearful eyes were bright. “She told me she’d never been with a man. She had never…you know—before. Ever. But I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t be stopped. I was—I was like a wild animal or something. Oh, she fought me. Oh yes. She fought me very fiercely at first but then…Then, you know, she began to respond. After a while, she couldn’t help herself, you know, she began to respond, if you see what I mean. And then—then we did things….”

  Weiss cleared his throat. Nothing human was alien to him but this was getting distasteful.

  “Wonderful, wonderful things…” murmured the Mousey Guy.

  “Why don’t you tell me about this man?” Weiss said. “The one who’s trying to kill you.”

  “Oh.” Spender blinked a few times, coming back to himself. His gaze focused again on the detective. “It wasn’t until—you know, afterwards, that she told me she had a brother. She told me she had a brother who lived with her.”

  “In her humble dwelling.”

  “Yes. That’s why she said I had to hurry away.”

  Weiss nodded gravely.

  “And—and, well, that was it,” Spender said. “I mean, I never saw her again. I left Malaga the very next day. Oh, I was quite ashamed of myself, let me tell you. Letting my passions get the better of me like that. I just—I just tried to put the whole thing out of my mind. And I did, at first. A year went by and there was nothing. And then…Then, a few weeks ago, I started to get these phone calls. At night, at my house. First there was just no one. I would pick up the phone and there would be no one there. But the other day—the other night I should say—I got a call and a man was on the line. And he said, right out, ‘I am coming to kill you, señor.’ Like that. With an accent, a Spanish accent. ‘I am coming to kill you, señor,’ he said, ‘for you have destroyed my sister’s honor and the honor of my family.’ That’s the Spanish, you know, that’s what they’re like. They’re very passionate about keeping their family honor.”

  Weiss rested his cheek against his palm. “It’s their hot Latin blood,” he said.

  “Exactly! Exactly. And the other night? The other night, I woke up around 2:00 A.M. Just woke up for no reason. I couldn’t tell why. And I got out of bed and went to the window. And there he was. This man, this Spaniard, this Spanish-looking man. Just standing there. Standing there on the sidewalk. Staring right up at me, right at my window. And when he saw me, you know what he did? He took out this knife. This just—enormous, great big knife. And he drew it—like this—drew it right across his throat, as if he were cutting himself. And he was looking right at me when he did it, Mr. Weiss. Right at me. I’m sure of it.”

  Weiss had a wonderful face, made for the business. His expression of world-weariness and human sympathy was absolutely impenetrable. He was fifty about. Had thick, weighty, sagging features. Deep brown eyes with thick black brows above and deep gray bags beneath them. Salt-and-pepper hair, unkempt but somehow authoritative. He was big—really big—six-foot-three or -four, with huge shoulders and a dominating paunch. And because of his cop background—or maybe in spite of it—he often gave the impression that he was hovering over you protectively. Which sometimes I think he actually was.

  Now, after long consideration, he asked, “What exactly can I do for you, Mr. Spender?”

  “Well, find him!” Mousey Guy blurted at once. “You’ve got to find him, stop him. You’ve got to, Mr. Weiss. He’s coming after me, I just know it. And if you don’t do something—do something fast—well, by this time next week—I’m sure of it—I’ll be dead.”

  “So you figure it’s total bullshit,” I said.

  Weiss blustered like a horse. “A hundred percent reality-free, I guarantee it. I should’ve called you in to play Spanish tunes on a guitar while he was talking.” He made a face. “Her humble dwelling! He had to hurry away from her humble dwelling! I mean, for fuck’s sake.”

  I was in an alcove down the hall from Weiss’s office. It was just a little nook that served the Agency as a mailroom. There was a copying machine in there and a fax machine and a stamp machine. And my desk and me.

  Weiss often wandered by like this. He often paused distracted here, hands in his pockets, half-lost in thought. He liked to talk to me, to tell me things, about his cases, about his life. I’m not sure why. He knew I was an aspiring author so maybe he hoped I’d remember what he said, write it down one day, preserve it, make it matter somehow. Or maybe he was anticipating that and he wanted to make sure I heard his interpretation of events, his spin. Then again maybe I just seemed so harmless and arty to him, so far out of his orbit, that he didn’t even take me seriously. Maybe he felt that talking to me was like confiding in the empty air.

  “Well, he could’ve done it, couldn’t he?” I asked. I was standing at the copier, watching a report go whirring and flapping through. “I mean, it’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “This guy? If this guy raped someone, I’m telling you, I’m the king of Romania. If he’s ever even been to Spain…” He shook his head. “I will kill you, señor. I mean, for fuck’s sake.”

  “So why’d you take the case?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I gotta make sure. I mean, the guy lives out in Sunset with his mother. What’ll it cost me to go talk to her? Make sure he’s not gonna hurt anyone or get hurt himself. Who knows? I could be wrong. Maybe every word out of his mouth is the living truth. Maybe one day you can write a book about his adventures. The Case of the Spanish Virgin.”

  The copier stopped whirring. I started to extract the report pages from the collater. Through the open door to Weiss’s office, we heard his computer play its little three-note song. An e-mail had come in.

  “Must be your update from Bishop,” I said.

  He nodded. As he wandered back to his desk, I heard him muttering, “She began to respond. I mean, for fuck’s sake. I’m the king of Romania.”

  Six

  Weiss. All well here but slow. Chris Wannamaker checking me on planes so we spend time together in the air. But he’s very sullen, silent. No way to question him. Watchful of his wife Kathleen too, suspicious, doesn’t want me close. Always home when she’s home so far. I managed some chats with her at work. Tough crust but lonely, abused. I just need a chance to get to her, pump her for info.

  “Uy,” Weiss groaned softly. Pump her for info. Bishop’s e-mails were always full of stuff like that. Weiss was probably the one person on earth Bishop cared about at all, the one person whose good opinion he actually wanted. But he knew the older man didn’t approve of some of his methods and I think he liked to rag him about it a little. The wild son giving the dig to his stodgy father sort of thing. Pump her for info.…

  Weiss put a hand on his stomach and groaned again. With the other hand, he scrolled the e-mail down. Read on.

  Another sighting of gray moustache, out at airfield this time. Now confirmed: moustache is Bernie Hirschorn. VBM. Heads Driscoll Foundation, which pretty much runs the city, maybe more. Lots of money, drug connections. A lot of dead bodies on his way to the top. Local businesses pay him off or he burns them out, maybe whacks them, takes them over. Owns most of the airpark now, half of Ray’s business.

  And Ray’s right—something’s going on. Some of Hirschorn’s front orgs. have been chartering Chris to fly. Sometimes with passengers, sometimes with Hirschorn, sometimes just with freight. Destination mostly Arcata, the county seat, according to the manifests. But Chris’s plane keeps returning from the north—Arcata’s to the west. Plus the flights take too long—the Hobbes time is way off.

  Weiss s
wiveled back and forth in his chair a little, thinking. He didn’t know what Hobbes time was exactly, but he didn’t like the sound of this. It seemed pretty clear what Bishop was telling him. This Hirschorn character was hiring Chris Wannamaker to fly somewhere in secret, falsely listing Arcata as the destination. But what for? North of Driscoll there was nothing but forest for miles and miles. Was it some kind of smuggling deal? Drugs, cigarettes, CDs in and out of Canada, something like that?

  Whatever it was, it made Weiss worry. Hirschorn sounded like a VBM all right—a Very Bad Man. A lot of dead bodies in his wake. And he knew how hard it was to rein Bishop in once he was onto something. Weiss would have to keep an eye on his operative, make sure he didn’t get himself into this too deep.

  The last paragraphs of the e-mail didn’t reassure him any.

  Working a possible angle. Chris Wannamaker’s a boozer. Big mouth, hothead, out of control. Hirschorn may want a better pilot, more reliable. I’ll see if I can find a way to move in there too.

  BTW, our client, Ray Grambling’s a fucking idiot. Scared, talks too much. Nearly blew my cover—called me by my real name—three times. Could get me killed. Seeya. JB

  Seven

  Chris Wannamaker was waiting by the twin engine. He had his back propped against the fuselage, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans. Bishop—his flight bag slung over one shoulder—walked toward him across the baking tarmac. Behind his shades, Chris watched Bishop come.

  Chris had half a foot over the smaller man, easy. The sleeves had been cut off his NORTH COUNTRY AVIATION T-shirt showing the brutal muscles corded on his arms. He had a tattoo on his right bicep: two snakes twined around a death’s-head; Born To Raise Hell. On his left arm he had a long, white, jagged scar. He had handsome curly brown hair and smooth features and a cruel half smile.

  “She’s preflighted,” he said when Bishop reached him. “Let’s fly.”

  Bishop nodded. They climbed into the cockpit.

  Chris sat silent in the copilot’s seat. He brooded on the view out the side window as Bishop fired the engines and taxied for the runway. Both men wore headsets but it was a Delta field. There was no tower, no ATIS, and in the quiet of morning, no traffic, nothing on the air. The men sat shoulder to shoulder and made no conversation to break the muffled rumble of the plane.

  It had been like this between them all week. They were natural enemies. They knew it the second they met. Chris was assigned to check Bishop out in the company aircraft. That was required for insurance purposes. But Bishop could’ve flown an anchor and Chris knew it. So all week, they had gone through the motions, saying only what they had to say.

  At the head of the runway, Bishop tapped the brakes. The Cessna paused. Bishop pressed the mike button.

  “Driscoll traffic, five-zero-four’s rolling off the active,” he said.

  With a smooth motion, he throttled up the engines. The plane started forward, gathered speed. Just as it red-lined, Bishop drew back the yoke. The wheels broke away from the pavement. They were airborne.

  “Zero-three-zero,” Chris muttered, still studying the window.

  At five hundred feet, Bishop banked the plane toward the north. And he thought: Well, there’s this anyway. The feel of the earth released beneath him, the way the landscape floated down like a handkerchief dropped from a lady’s hand. The way the stubble fields around the tin hangar became pristine and geometric as they receded in the vertical distance. The whole depressing city off his right sinking to a dim glitter. In the sweep of his windshield, from his ten o’clock to his two, Bishop surveyed the sky and the wild hills billowing away into it, green forest into blue mist into the white horizon. Moment after good moment, he edged the plane skyward.

  “Level her off,” Chris said.

  Bishop glanced at him. They were only five thousand feet above sea level now. The hills beneath them rose to three thousand and more. Bishop could still make out the riffled contours of the treetops. He could see the cars on the winding mountain highway, see their windows flashing in the sun. They were not supposed to do maneuvers less than three thousand feet above the ground.

  “Do a steep turn to the right,” Chris said. Then he went on brooding, turned away, his face propped on his fist.

  Bishop took a quick look at the directional gyro. Their heading was exactly 030. He rolled the plane into a forty-five-degree turn to the right. He set the nose on the horizon line and the Cessna swept around quickly. The mountains circled past the windshield. The city sparkled pleasantly far away and then was gone. The plane kept turning. The sun glared in through the glass. There were the mountains again. Bishop edged the yoke over, eased down on the rudder pedal. He checked the DG once more: 030 exactly as the Cessna’s wings came level. His glance flicked to the altimeter. He hadn’t lost a foot in altitude. A good maneuver, he thought.

  And just as he was thinking that, Chris’s hand suddenly snaked for one of the throttles. He shut down the right engine.

  It was part of the checkride—procedures during engine failure. Because when you lose the thrust in one engine, there’s nothing to balance the thrust produced by the other. Driven by the working engine, the plane yaws hard toward the dead spot and eventually starts to spiral toward the earth. Or it will unless you correct the yaw, jamming your foot down hard on the appropriate rudder pedal.

  Which is what Bishop did. But the rudder pedal didn’t budge.

  Which caused Bishop to remark: “Shit.”

  He stomped the pedal again. Nothing. The Cessna’s nose slid to the right, tilted down. Bishop’s foot battled against the pedal. It gave a little but then battled back. Bishop didn’t understand—and then he did understand but he could hardly believe it: Chris was stomping on the copilot’s controls, holding the rudder in place.

  “What the hell’re you…?”

  Chris laughed. “Ride ’em, boy!”

  With a great, heaving, sickening roll the plane turned over. The green hills spun up toward them. Bishop reached for the right throttle but Chris was holding it tight. The plane spiraled slowly round and round but it plummeted faster and faster. The air began to whine as they fell. The g force pulled hotly at the flesh of Bishop’s cheeks.

  “Yee-haw!” Chris shouted into the headset, shrill, deafening, like a cowboy on a bucking bronc.

  Bishop cursed again and hit him, drove a knuckle down into the side of his thigh.

  “Ow, fuck!” shouted Chris.

  His leg went limp. The rudder pedal gave way under Bishop’s foot. He jammed it. Grabbed the left throttle and yanked it to idle. Now, with zero thrust on both sides, he could haul the yoke over to roll the ailerons level. The nauseating spiral stopped but the plane kept diving down toward the mountains. The sea of trees bubbled up on either side of them. They were sinking toward it fast. A low ridge of brown rock loomed huge in the windshield.

  His jaw clenched, Bishop pulled the yoke back, pulled the nose up by main strength. He throttled up both engines at once, full power. He felt his balls go cold as the brown-rock ridge shoved itself at his face for another second and another.

  Finally, the Cessna began to rise. It lifted, roaring, over the ridge, back up toward the sky. Bishop glanced quickly at his airspeed indicator—V-x—then to his nine o’clock. The treetops seemed to brush the bottom of the wing. He could see the individual leaves on them. But a second more and they were clear. The earth was falling away again.

  Bishop looked over at Chris. “What the fuck’s wrong with you, you son of a bitch?” he said.

  Chris rubbed his thigh where Bishop had hit him. He glared at the other man darkly. Then the darkness passed. He chuckled. The sound was deep and breathy in Bishop’s headset.

  “Take her back up to five thousand,” he said. “Let’s try some more.”

  And he turned away to stare sullenly out the window.

  Eight

  JB. Just to remind you on procedures. Keep me well informed about nature of criminal activity, if any. I’m aware of the danger t
o our client but want my operatives safe as well. Also, as regards Mrs. Wannamaker, I’m sure she’s a good source of information but I expect you to gather that information in a reasonable and professional manner.—W

  Bishop saw his chance to begin gathering information in a professional manner that very night.

  He was sitting at the table in his bedroom upstairs. He had just finished reading Weiss’s e-mail on the handheld. He looked up through his window. Saw Kathleen step out through her door onto her front porch. In the glow of the half-moon—and in the glow from her porch light—he could also see that Chris’s truck was gone from the driveway.

  Bishop sat still. He watched her. She was wearing a blue T-shirt and khaki shorts. He liked how big her breasts were and the roundness of her hips. Plus he was still pissed off at Chris about the stunt he’d pulled in the plane that morning. He wanted to fuck the woman twice, once to pump her for info and once to get back at her goddamned husband. Looking down at her, he thought he’d enjoy it both times.

  Kathleen set herself on the railing. She lit a cigarette, took a drag.

  Bishop deleted Weiss’s e-mail. He pushed away from the table.

  A minute or two later, he strolled outside. Full dark had fallen. The heat, which had come down like a sledgehammer all day, now just lay on the night like a blanket. Cicadas were rattling in the sycamores. Insects zigged like electrons round Kathleen’s porch light. Bishop saw the faint shadows of them on her face and her bare arms as she turned to smile at him. He crossed the thin border of lawn between their houses.