by David Freed
I could hear sirens approaching. I told Lawless to relax and that I’d help him and Rosario out of the plane.
Escaping the wreckage required nothing more than unlatching my door. I unbuckled my seat belt, sort of half-rolled out of the upturned airplane, then hustled around to the other side to give Rosario an assist as she crawled out on her hands and knees. Lawless was right behind her. I offered him my hand. He pushed it aside.
“I don’t want your goddamn help,” he said.
With my passengers safe, I surveyed the damage:
The Ruptured Duck’s right wing was crumpled from strut to wingtip. The tailfin and right side of the horizontal stabilizer were crushed. The prop was bent at one end like a pipe cleaner, and the nose wheel twisted at a grotesque angle that reminded me of Joe Theismann’s leg after that sack by Lawrence Taylor. I tried to get mad at my airplane for having failed me, but I couldn’t. The Duck had absorbed the force of the crash and saved our lives.
“Nice job, old buddy,” I whispered, patting his scraped and dented fuselage.
“Now that was a rush,” Rosario said, smiling and trembling at the same time. “Not that I’d want to do it every day.”
There was no ready explanation as to why the Duck’s engine had abruptly failed. I’d been meticulous in its maintenance. Never once had anything that would be considered a major problem. I knew that federal aviation officials would investigate to determine the cause of the crash. They would invariably blame it on me, if only to reassure other pilots who fly Cessna 172’s, the most popular airplane ever built, that the same type of accident couldn’t possibly happen to them because of mechanical malfunction. But there was no time to concern myself with that now.
A red San Diego fire engine pulled up, lights flashing. Three firefighters garbed head-to-toe in silver, Area 51-style hazmat suits climbed down from the truck. Two of them, armed with handheld extinguishers, began spraying down the plane even though there were no flames to fight. The third carried a medical kit and asked us if we required treatment.
“This man is a menace!” Lawless said, pointing at me as the firefighter tried to examine the cut on his forehead. “I’m placing him under arrest for attempted murder.” Lawless pushed the fireman aside, reached for his handcuffs and ordered me to turn around.
“Kurt, it was an accident,” Rosario said. “Be happy you’re alive. I am. I’m ecstatic, in fact. Now, why don’t you let the nice firefighter have a look at that cut?”
“He told us it was safe. Is that not what he said?” Lawless was breathing hard. “Well, it’s definitely not safe! We could’ve died, Rosario. And he knew it.”
Lawless grabbed my wrist to cuff me. I spun out of his hold.
“Listen to your partner, Detective. It was an accident.”
“Resisting arrest and attempted murder. That’s it!”
Again Lawless moved to handcuff me. Again I twisted free. Enraged, he pulled out his Glock.
“Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
“Whoa,” the firefighter said, raising his own hands, “this is the freakiest plane crash I’ve ever responded to.”
“You’re being an idiot, Lawless,” Rosario said. “I’m lead investigator on this case. Now, either holster your pistol, and I mean right now, or I swear, I will report you to internal affairs on an out-of-policy weapons draw.”
Lawless eyeballed Rosario. He eyeballed me. Then, like some petulant little boy made to put away his playthings, he angrily holstered his gun and let the nice fireman patch up his face.
Rosario got out her phone and said she was calling authorities in Yuma to have them pick up Bunny and his cousin before they could hightail it across the border. She still didn’t trust the cops in Arizona, she said, but under the circumstances, there was no alternative.
I gazed forlornly at the Ruptured Duck and wondered when, if ever, he would play again among the clouds. Considering my airplane represented my sole source of income, the same could’ve just as easily been asked of me.
THE CRASH led the nightly news on every TV station in San Diego. Three news helicopters orbited Montgomery Airport, relaying aerial shots of the Ruptured Duck, while reporters filed stand-ups live from the scene. They interviewed anybody they could find who’d claimed to have seen the crash, and even some who admitted they hadn’t. One old guy, who wore a 56th Fighter Group baseball cap and was identified as a former airline pilot, said he was in his hangar overlooking the flight line and could tell from the strained pitch of the Duck’s engine that a crash was imminent. But the most compelling eyewitness account came from a delivery van driver named Jay for “Pampered Bottoms Diaper Service” who said he happened to look over while cruising the frontage road to northbound Highway 163 with a truckload of soiled nappies, glimpsed the stricken Duck diving straight toward him, and “about crapped my pants.”
The worst part of all was that the newshounds had apparently checked the Duck’s tail number online and quickly determined my identity. Within an hour of my having debriefed various airport and local law enforcement authorities about the crash, yours truly was all over the airwaves. The story even led the news more than 200 miles away, in Rancho Bonita, where the local anchorwoman, a twenty-three-year-old former Miss Avocado Festival winner who couldn’t read from a TelePrompTer if the fate of the free world depended on it, got my name wrong, along with almost everything else:
“Topping the news tonight, a Rancho Bonita flight instructor identified by authorities as Cordell Hogan was seriously injured today along with three of his passengers when their small jet crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at a San Diego area airport. Witnesses said the airplane narrowly avoided hitting a bread truck.”
Among those watching, only because it was summer and there were no football games on, was my landlady, who called to make sure I was still breathing.
“I’m fine, Mrs. Schmulowitz. All’s well that ends well.”
“Listen, I know you love flying, Bubeleh,” she scolded me over the phone as I drove back to Hub Walker’s house, “but if human beings were meant to fly, God would’ve made it a lot easier to find parking at the airport.”
“People love to swim, Mrs. Schmulowitz, and I don’t hear you squawking about gills.”
“Swimming? Don’t get me started. It’s supposed to be such great exercise, low impact, good for your figure, blah blah blah. If all that’s true, how do you explain whales?”
“I’m not sure I follow you, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”
“They look like big blobs floating around out there.”
“You don’t like whales?”
“Do I like whales? I love whales. I love whales like nobody’s business! But even whales drown—which is my point. Swimming is dangerous. Flying is dangerous. If I were you, I’d think about doing something less with the, you know, hazards. Square dancing. Now, there’s something you’re not gonna get killed doing.”
“I can’t make a living square dancing, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”
“Well, you’re not doing too good with the flying from everything I can see.”
She had a point.
I told her I hoped to be home in a couple of days, just as soon as I could figure out what to do with my airplane, or what was left of it. Mrs. Schmulowitz promised to save me some of the brisket she’d cooked for Kiddiot.
“Did he come back?”
“Not yet, bubby. But I’m sure he will soon.”
A melancholy settled over me. My airplane was a wreck and my Kiddiot was still gone. He may have been the world’s most intellectually challenged cat, but he was still my intellectually challenged cat. The thought of life without him and the Duck left me feeling hollow inside.
“I’m getting my tummy tuck tomorrow,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “I’ll keep looking until then. He’s around here somewhere. I’ll leave some brisket out for him.”
I wished her a speedy recovery and made a mental note to buy her white daisies, her favorite, when I got home.
CRISSY WALKER met me at her front door with a warm embrace. Hub squeezed my shoulder and said he was relieved I was still alive.
“It’s a miracle you survived, from what I saw on the TV,” Hub said. “You must have some damn powerful angels looking out for you, son.”
In Buddhism, angels are known as devas. The only thing I knew about them is that they rarely intervene in human affairs. So maybe it was other angels who’d come to my rescue, like the workers at Cessna who, forty years earlier, had built into the Ruptured Duck’s cabin the structural integrity to withstand an event like the crash I’d just lived through without so much as a hangnail. Whoever or whatever was responsible for my good fortune, I was alive. And that was good enough for me.
The Walkers stepped aside and there was Savannah. She approached me with open arms, like she was going to enfold me, happy that I’d returned in one piece—then socked me in the stomach.
“What was that for?”
“Scaring me half to death.”
Once upon a time I would’ve seen a punch like that coming, slipped it easily and, had it not been my ex-wife, snapped the arm of whoever had thrown it.
You’re getting old, Logan. That or civilized.
“I crash an airplane and you punch me?”
“You couldn’t take two minutes and call me? I have to watch the TV news to find out you were nearly killed, and you can’t understand why I’m upset? Jesus, Logan. Can’t you think of anyone else besides yourself for once in your life?”
“I’m sorry, Savannah, I was a little busy.”
“Busy. Right. Being self-absorbed. You have no consideration for anybody else. It’s like the empathetic components of your thought processes are one step removed from a Neanderthal.”
“So a Neanderthal deserves to be socked in the stomach? Think about that, Savannah. If I’d have punched you, the cops would be on their way over here right now.”
“If you had punched me, Logan, we’d be done.”
“I’m starting to wonder if we already are.”
She turned in a huff and disappeared into the house.
Hub and Crissy watched her go.
“That’s how they all are,” Walker said. “Every one of ’em. Wired up funny as hell.”
Crissy slugged him in the shoulder, feigning insult. He grinned and drew her close.
“Savannah was just scared, that’s all,” Crissy said. “We all were, quite frankly. I know she’s relieved you’re OK.”
“She sure has an interesting way of showing it.”
Across the street, Major Kilgore sat in a white wicker chair on his front porch, cleaning what looked like an M14 rifle.
I SPENT that night parked in the driveway in my rented Escalade. Savannah refused to talk to me and had gone to bed early. The Walkers, sympathetic to my plight, graciously offered me the use of their living room sofa, but I declined. I needed my own space to think things through.
Savannah, I realized, was a compulsion, if not an addiction. If I were to recover from that addiction, I would need to fall back on the same kind of twelve-step strategy embraced by alcoholics and gamblers. The first step of any recovery program is to admit that you can’t master your addiction alone. It requires a higher power. This is where I ran into trouble. Buddha to my knowledge never addressed the issue of former spouses that you just can’t let go of. I was also fairly certain that no support groups existed in the Rancho Bonita area specifically intended to benefit men with a problem like mine. “I Miss My Ex Anonymous”? Seriously, what guy would attend that kind of whine fest?
If I were at all honest with myself, however, the truth was that, painful as it was at times, I didn’t want to escape my Savannah addiction. And, at the same time, I wanted her out of my life as much as I ever wanted to be rid of anything. Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted when it came to her. I tried to focus on my missing cat. I tried to think about my broken airplane. Both made me feel worse.
My phone rang. I was hoping it was Savannah, but it wasn’t. It was Eric LaDucrie, the baseball star-turned-death-penalty proponent Hub Walker had wanted me to meet with. He said he was due back in San Diego the next day. We made arrangements to meet at his condo on Coronado at two P.M. He seemed eager to talk.
I drifted off to sleep somewhere after midnight. Two hours later, I was awakened by the sound of chewing.
Raccoons had invaded Hub Walker’s trash cans. Five of the critters were enjoying a late night feast of chicken bones and what looked to be leftover fettuccini Alfredo. I rolled down my window and yelled at the thieves in their cute little Zorro masks to scram. One of them paused, raised up on his haunches, and looked over at me as if to say, “Yeah? What’re you gonna do about it, pal?,” then continued chowing down with his buddies like I wasn’t there. I rolled the window back up, reclined the driver’s seat, and tried to go back to sleep.
Live long enough, you learn to pick your battles.
Ten
The sun was up. Savannah had locked herself in the Walkers’ guesthouse bathroom. From the other side of the door, I could hear water running in the sink.
“How about we go to SeaWorld today,” I said, “pet some penguins?”
No response.
“You’re being unreasonable, Savannah.”
“I’m being unreasonable?” she said from the other side of the door.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare the hell out of you. Next time I crash, I’ll definitely call you immediately afterward, OK?”
The door flung open. Savannah was wrapped in a towel.
“How can you possibly have the audacity to call me ‘unreasonable’? Do you know how many nights, how many years, I cried myself to sleep, wondering where you were, wondering if you were alive or dead, knowing you were lying through your teeth whenever I asked you what you did for a living—what you really did—and all you’d tell me was, ‘Marketing’? Yesterday brought it all back, Logan. The fear. The constant, terrible stress. I’m just not sure I can go through it all over again. Can you at least begin to understand that?”
She caught me staring at her legs.
“I’m trying to have an adult conversation with you. Can you please get your mind out of the gutter for once?”
“My mind is not in the gutter, Savannah. It’s in the shower. I need to take one—unless you want to take one together. Conserve precious natural resources. Save the planet. All that happy stuff.”
She rolled her eyes, tears streaming. Then she slammed the door, locking it once more.
Call me a dope. I’d probably deserve it.
“Guess I’ll take a shower later,” I said to the door.
Silence.
My phone rang as I walked outside to cool off. The caller identified himself as Paul Horvath from the Federal Aviation Administration’s local Flight Standards District Office. He’d been assigned, he said, to investigate the “incident” in which I’d been involved the previous day at Montgomery Airport. His voice was nasally, like his nose had been clipped by a clothespin.
“My preliminary examination of your aircraft found something quite interesting,” Horvath said. “How soon can we meet?”
“As soon as I can hire an attorney willing to represent me.”
Most pilots have a keen distrust of the FAA. For better or worse, the agency’s accident investigators are perceived as headhunters eager to ground any flyer for the slightest transgression. A meteor could sheer off your wings, terrorists could blast you out of the sky over Kansas with shoulder-fired missiles, and the FAA would still find some way to blame you for the crash.
“You’re entitled to legal counsel, Mr. Logan,” Horvath said, “but I should tell you, again preliminarily, that the causative factors leading to the catastrophic failure of your engine yesterday would appear to have been largely beyond your control.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that I’d prefer to show you what I found, rather than discuss it over the telephone.”
He didn’t
sound like an evil government bureaucrat. He sounded like a government bureaucrat with an adenoid condition. I agreed to meet him an hour later outside the airport’s terminal building.
Savannah was still locked in the bathroom. I told her I’d be back that afternoon, which would still leave us plenty of time if she wanted to go to SeaWorld.
“I’ll think about it,” she said through the door.
At least she was still talking to me.
CRISSY WALKER left a note for me on the kitchen counter: Hub was spending the morning with Ryder at zoo camp, and later attending a lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art. Would Savannah and I like to join them for lunch after they got home? I couldn’t speak for Savannah, I wrote on the backside of the same note, but I was headed to the airport to meet with the FAA and to not expect me until afternoon. I added, “Thanks anyway.” I would’ve included one of those little smiley faces, only I don’t do smiley faces.
The mess the raccoons had left beside my Escalade was still there. The Walkers must’ve missed it when they pulled out. I cleaned it up as best I could while Major Kilgore trimmed his hedges across the street with electric clippers, pausing periodically to check his work with a carpenter’s level. Backing out of the driveway, I gave him a thumbs-up, but he appeared not to appreciate the gesture. I could see him in my rearview as I drove away, getting smaller and smaller, glaring after me.
I called my insurance broker, Vincent Moretti, on the way to the airport and left a message, letting him know he’d be receiving a claim on my policy. A big claim. In all my years of flying, even in combat, I’d never once dinged an airplane. And of all the planes I’d ever flown, none was more reliable than the Ruptured Duck. I hoped to get him back in the air, but given his age and the damage done, I had my doubts that my old airplane was even salvageable.
Paul Horvath was waiting for me in the parking lot outside the terminal building at Montgomery Field, a professorial, gray-haired man in his late fifties with bifocals and a wispy, Wolf Blitzer-style beard. A laminated FAA photo ID card hung from a lanyard around his neck. He wore a peach-colored, short-sleeve dress shirt, pleated khakis, and black, soft-soled oxfords. His left eye twitched with a pronounced tic.
