“There’s a copy machine in the corner. You can make copies. Do not take anything. Anything at all.” She left.
Paul spent a few minutes poking through the files on Bailey’s desk. In the maintenance records, he found a file of invoices for services rendered by someone named Dave LeBlanc. He made copies of the more important paperwork.
Back in the living room, he found Mrs. Bailey drinking the last of the coffee, ankles crossed, hair perfectly smoothed, holding herself together until he was gone.
“Who’s this?” he asked, showing her the invoices.
“Dave is—was—Skip’s maintenance engineer.” She almost smiled. “Fancy term for mechanic. But Skip thought highly of his abilities.”
Paul noted the phrasing. “But that’s the only way he thought highly of him?”
“Oh, you know. Dave’s the same age as us, but with a whole different set of criteria.”
“Objectionable lifestyle?”
“You should meet him. Form your own opinion.”
“Skip didn’t like him.”
“Skip liked everyone,” she said emphatically.
He got up. “Too late to catch LeBlanc?”
“He comes in late. I’m sure you can find him at the John Wayne Airport.”
“Mrs. Bailey, I know it’s hard, but I want you to look through your husband’s paperwork. See if there’s anything there that catches your eye. Even if you think it’s completely stupid, I want you to call me immediately.” He handed her a card.
“If you think it’s important . . .” she said. “I just about can’t stand to but I’ll try.”
Paul didn’t really think she would, not anytime soon. He just hoped she would.
She saw him to the door. “You know, unless a plane explodes, it takes a long time to crash,” she said. “A long time you know you’re going to die. I hope he wasn’t too scared. I hope . . . I hope he had time to get over how afraid he was watching the ground get closer. I hope he thought for one second about how happy he made us.”
After a quick stop for fortification from one of the thousands of fast-food restaurants along 190th, Paul hit the freeways by two P.M., heading south toward John Wayne Airport in Orange County. Rush hour in greater Los Angeles now encompassed all daylight hours. Slowed to a crawl, flipping stations in his rented car, he had plenty of time to note the differences between northern and southern California.
People here were all colors, not so different from up north, but what was different was the proportion. By his estimation, the so-called minorities outnumbered Anglos by two to one. With heat rising from the asphalt pavement and the old clunkers on the road that could only live in a climate as cordial as the one in southern Cal, he felt he was cruising the roads of Mexico, Africa, India, even the South Pacific, anyplace hot, where people wore brighter colors, where loud music ruled, and people were louder and brighter too.
In those faraway places, years ago, people chose to take their time. Now the traffic had returned them all to the pace of a burro.
Somebody cut in front of him and he sat on his horn and shouted imprecations, which got him the finger from the other car, which almost led to something, because Paul lost his temper and returned the favor. He said to himself, I’ve got a goddamn air bag after all, and swung around the guy in the right lane. But the guy chickened out and didn’t try to tailgate him or pass him again. Paul was violently disappointed for a second.
Then sanity returned. You’re in handgun central, he said to himself, take it easy.
Passing the signs for South Coast Plaza, the amusement park for prosperous adults, he searched for some jazz on the radio just long enough to miss the airport exit and waste another twenty minutes inching his way back onto the 405. Cut off half a dozen times by aggressive drivers, forced to slam on his brakes for inexplicable dead stops in the traffic flow, he felt his heart beating again in his throat and the spirit of savagery rising, rising . . . He steeled himself to remain calm. Thousands fought this daily battle honorably and so could he.
The airport, tucked in the corner formed by the boundaries of the densely populated towns of Costa Mesa, Newport, and Irvine, handled small planes in addition to regular flights. Bypassing the major terminals, asking questions along the way, he worked his way over to a hangar on the fringes where Connie Bailey had told him he might find Dave LeBlanc. Unable to locate a place within half a mile to park legally, he pulled up right beside the hangar and parked.
Inside the tall, unmarked, corrugated metal building, he followed the noise and advice of other workers until he located LeBlanc in an air-conditioned bay much like the ones used by auto mechanics. Wearing dark blue coveralls with a black plastic visor over his face, the mechanic looked like Darth Vader manipulating a futuristic gun that shot fire. He turned the gun off, flipped up his visor, and peered at Paul quizzically.
“I know you?”
“Connie Bailey sent me,” said Paul, introducing himself.
LeBlanc took his hand out of his glove and shook. “Poor old Skip,” he said.
“You too busy to talk for a minute?”
“What’s this about?”
“Some loose ends. You know, the widow wants things tied up before . . .” He left the thought dangling.
“Oh, right,” said LeBlanc hurriedly, uncomfortable, as everyone was, with the hint of death, funerals, burials, and all the other unmentionable things lingering in the unfinished thought. He tossed his gloves and helmet on a bench, ruffled his flat gray hair, and led Paul into an office that smelled of grease and chemicals.
On the shelves above a desk, a collection of weapons made Paul stiffen. He moved closer.
Hoisting himself up onto the battered metal desk, LeBlanc scratched a bulging gut. He turned to the shelf and lifted an object up, holding it out for Paul to see. “This one’s an atomic pistol from Buck Rogers . Recognize it?”
Dimly recognizing the title of a movie he had seen as a child, Paul said, “Not really.”
“Used to have a ray gun from Forbidden Planet but I sold it to a guy who lives in Boston. That one’s bigger. Long. Maybe two feet long.”
Paul took the ray gun from him and shot it out the window. Heavy. Real metal. But nothing happened, no buzzing, no red light, no disintegration. “These all from movies?”
“Yep. No point in living down here if you can’t take advantage. Sometimes the studios have auctions. Sometimes, I pick ’em up in warehouse sales, collectors’ markets.”
“You have quite a collection.”
“Over a hundred. A lot of vintage fifties.”
So the Darth Vader look must have been intentional, although a little out of his preferred era. The guy was a sci-fi movie freak. “Any of them work?”
LeBlanc laughed, turning his face into the warren of lines that showed a hard-living past. “I wish.”
“Ever sit up here and pick off people going by down in the yard?” asked Paul, looking out the window.
“Tempting, isn’t it?” he asked. “Beats therapy.”
“Mmm,” said Paul, handing it back.
Setting the ray gun lovingly back on the shelf, LeBlanc reached into a drawer, and offered Paul a fruit drink in a collapsible aluminum packet.
“No, thanks. Too early for me,” said Paul.
LeBlanc chuckled. “Funny man.” He was in an incongruously fine mood for someone who had lost a friend. He raised his eyebrows at Paul, smiling, stuck a straw into a hole in the packet and made sucking noises. He stopped, wiped his mouth and said, “Ah. That hit the spot.”
“What are you working on?” Paul asked.
LeBlanc nodded toward the room they had just left. “That’s a Cessna, single engine. Needs a complete overhaul and the owner wants it yesterday. The usual horseshit.”
“I’ve always wondered. Why would anyone choose to fly a single-engine plane? Isn’t a twin-engine plane safer?”
“Now that’s a typical beginner’s mistake,” LeBlanc said. “Actually, there are more fatal accidents
in twin engines. See, with a single engine, something goes wrong, you head instantly for the nearest open stretch of land and get on down. With two engines, it fools you. You think, hey, I’ve got one more engine. I can make it home: increases your risk because you already took one more risk than you should have. You start with a minor mistake and end up smacking into a mountainside like old Skip.”
The callous way he dismissed Connie Bailey’s husband didn’t sit well with Paul. “You been doing this work for long?” he said.
“Must be more ’n twenty years now. Whew. Time flies when you’re having supercharged fun.”
“All that time with Bailey?”
“Not at first. Skip had a regular job for a while. So it’s been more like the past ten with him.” LeBlanc dug around in his drawer again, coming up with a fistful of airplane peanut packets. “Want some?”
“No, thanks,” said Paul.
“How’s Connie making out?”
“She’s holding up.”
“That’s good,” he said, breaking open the plastic on the packaging with his teeth. “I’m glad to hear it, even though I don’t know her too well. She and I never really hit it off.”
“Why do you think?”
“I don’t know why. I like her fine.”
“How about you and Bailey?”
“Skip and I got along. He treated that plane like a baby.”
“So people say.”
He crunched his peanuts, looking thoughtful. “Except maybe not the NTSB,” he said. “I got a visit. I mean, aren’t they saying he blew it up there? Me and Skip go way back. I don’t like hearing them say things like that about him. Draggin’ up that old business about how he fell asleep at the wheel. It isn’t right. Let the dead rest in peace.”
“Buddies, huh?”
“Damn right, buddies.”
“Wasn’t it you who told the NTSB about Skip’s old problem?”
LeBlanc’s face screwed up into an exaggerated expression of innocence.
Paul reached over beside him and picked up a plastic packet. Ripping it open, he asked, “How long were you in?”
“How’d you know about that? Connie tell you? Because I think maybe she holds that against me sometimes.”
“Lucky guess.”
LeBlanc cocked his head and a new look entered his eyes. He began shaking his head, smiling. “I shoulda known right away. You’re an ex-cop, aren’t you? Well, I’m an ex-con, so we’re even. It’s no secret. I did five years. Shot a guy in a bar fight. Didn’t kill him, though I sure wanted to at the time. Bastard screwed my woman. That was a long time ago, early seventies. Right after I got out of ’Nam. Did a lot of drugs back then, lots of alcohol. I don’t do that stuff no more. I’m a changed man.”
“With guns that don’t have bullets.”
“That’s right. I sublimate.”
“Glad to hear it. That where you met Skip? Inside?”
He laughed raucously. “He’ll be turning in his grave, hearing you suggest any such thing. No, ol’ Skip was straight-arrow all the way. We were both Air Force.”
“You worked with him?”
“For him, you might say. Just like here.”
“He took pity on you. Hired you when no one else would.”
“I’m a damn good mechanic. If ol’ Skip had come to me all high and mighty I wouldn’t have worked for him. He knew he had the best plane mechanic in California. What’s that word that comes between sympathetic and copacetic? Both gettin’ something out of the deal?”
“Symbiotic?”
“Right. I have a way with machines. Skip knew how good I was. And I needed a job. It worked out good.”
“The plane he flew. A single-engine Beechcraft Model 18. That’s a pretty old plane, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Built in the sixties. But let me tell you a little secret. Most planes you fly in were built twenty, thirty years ago. They stuff in a coupla new seat covers, out with the orange and in with the mauve or whatever the hell else color people are painting their living room walls, and call ’em refurbished. That plane was as good as you’ll find top to bottom, and I’m not talking upholstery.” He crumpled the trash of four snack packets and two drinks and dropped them on the floor. “I gotta get moving,” he said. “Time’s money for us wage slaves.”
“Tell me about the last day,” Paul said. “What did the Beechcraft need done?”
“The usual checklist. Want a copy?”
“Sure.”
He rustled through a pile of paperwork on the desk and pulled out a folder. “I keep good records. Skip liked that about me, praised me for it many a time.”
“Tell me about that last flight. Were you here?”
“I split after we went through the check. He was a little skittish, new passenger and all. Thought she might act up, maybe.”
“She? I thought the passenger was male.”
Either he was holding back a laugh or was about to be sick. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to confuse you. You know, we always called the plane ‘she.’ I know it was a boy that went down with him, of course.”
“Was there anything iffy about that plane the day it came down? Anything in need of attention? Anything at all?”
“Not a damn thing. She was in perfect condition for a nice easy ride up to the mountains.”
“Ever been up there yourself?” Paul said casually.
“Where?”
“Tahoe, Reno, that area.”
“Nah.” No more smiling, and when he wasn’t smiling, you noticed the heavy-lidded eyes and the hard thin mouth.
“Ever met Christopher Sykes?”
“Who?” He had tensed. He knew they were at the heart of the discussion.
“The kid who was the passenger.”
“I never saw him. Never met him. Too bad about him. Yeah.” LeBlanc shook his head over Chris Sykes, and Paul thought he actually did look sorry.
On the off chance, Paul said, “I’ll be talking to Jan Sapitto tomorrow.”
He looked blank.
“You know, Jan. Lives here in LA. Old friend of Beth Sykes.”
“In case you’re wondering,” LeBlanc said, “I don’t know the lady. I don’t know these people, and I’m just a mechanic and I don’t want to be hassled because Skip took a header. It’s too bad, and not only because he’s dead. Lawyers and cops are coming out of their holes in the ground to make my life miserable. I had enough of that a long time ago.”
Paul gave him his card. “Call me if you forgot to tell me anything,” he said. “I don’t have anything against you. I’m just trying to find out what happened to that plane.”
“Keep your card,” LeBlanc said, handing it back. “I told you all I know. If I see you down there in the yard again”—he whipped a red plastic spacegun off the wall and aimed it at Paul—“I might just pick you off.” He shot a dot of blue light directly into Paul’s heart, threw back his head, and laughed.
CHAPTER 7
NINA HAD READ about a plastic surgery arrest in San Jose the week before. The Vietnamese doctor, catering to a primarily Vietnamese clientele, operated out of the back room of a beauty shop. He performed liposuction, face-lifts, and breast implants and apparently had only a passing acquaintance with anesthesiology. The problem was, anyone with an M.D. could do it. Plastic surgery was a tremendously lucrative specialty, and the market was growing as the baby boomers entered their fifties demanding to remain in their thirties.
William Sykes’s Re-Creation Clinic on Saddle Road appeared to be on the other side of the universe from San Jose, instead of just a few hundred miles away.
Sited close to the center of town on a slope below Heavenly, from the engraved brass sign to the custom Murano glass light that hung above the doorway, the clinic was a study in discretion and class. Nina parked in a small lot secluded behind tall trees and buzzed for entry. A soft voice preceded an almost ceremonial opening of the double doors leading inside. The sleek receptionist, whose desk sat in front of one of the larges
t picture windows overlooking the lake Nina had ever seen, practically wall-sized, led her immediately into another room. There, a capable-looking nurse in whites expressed her sorrow at the passing of Dr. Sykes, seeming quite sincere in her praise of the dead doctor, and invited Nina to wait in a chair that faced yet another incredible view.
While she waited, she helped herself to some of the glossy albums lying around, featuring before and after shots of patients who were identified only by number. Some she recognized from the advertisements on television. Others were new. All showed spectacular improvements.
“We don’t put them all in there,” a young man said, and she jumped. She closed the album she had been looking at and set it down. “Believe it or not, some clients don’t want their surgery shouted from the rooftops.” He extended his hand and Nina took it.
“I’m Dylan Brett,” said the best-looking man Nina could remember meeting in her entire life. “Bill’s partner here at the clinic.”
“Nina Reilly,” she said. While she was recovering from touching someone who looked like Pierce Brosnan and Gabriel Byrne rolled into one throbbing mass of maleness, she forced herself to remember who she was and why she was there. He sat down across a table from her, muscles tensed as if ready to run a race, a man who, by his mere presence, created an atmosphere as vibrant as sunlight in the room. Holy cow, she thought foolishly, observing him as she spoke. How the women must swoon.
“Bill’s death is a terrible blow,” he said. “He was a really special surgeon. In addition to his gift for surgery, he had a gift for dealing with people. He knew how to set them at ease. Most people come here feeling uncertain and even frightened at the prospect of surgery, but Bill could get the most panicky patients wishing they had decided to do it years ago.” A memory flitted over his face and as he laughed and shook his head, an unruly lock of dark hair fell down over his forehead, just like in the movies. “Anyone who came in here less than committed left a visit with Dr. Bill ready to mortgage the house.”
“Will the clinic continue without him?”
“Oh, yes. Chris . . . his son, showed no interest in practicing medicine, to his father’s great disappointment, although I’m sure he never told Chris that. Chris was interested in graphic arts and communications, so maybe he would have ended up doing some marketing for us eventually, but Bill was grooming me to be his successor here. He was considering retirement. We had discussed how we would handle things when that time came, so I’m prepared to take over without even having to close the clinic temporarily. I’ve already got an associate lined up who will start next month.”
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