The Daisy Ducks

by Rick Boyer

  "Where the hell I gonna use my potential on the South Side?"

  "You're in New England now, the Home of Potential."

  "Hmmmph! Who said that?"

  "I just did. You think the governor's office will go for it?"

  "Dayum! I want a Scotch."

  "The last thing you need. Okay, Mike, you can have a Scotch. I hope you enjoy it. It'll be the last one you'll have for a while." I said this half expecting a left hook to the jaw. But Mike said nothing, and thanked me softly when I handed him the drink and told him to pack what he'd need for the next week or so in the small grip I gave him. He could leave the rest of his gear in the guest room.

  We arrived at Glendale at ten-thirty. Poor Clarence Featherstone almost slumped through the floor when he saw Summers. He waited until Mike was being escorted to his room before he spoke to me, making nervous throat noises and wringing his hands.

  "You—uh, harrumph!—didn't say he was black."

  "I assumed you'd figure it out sooner or later."

  I signed a check for four figures. The man stood twitching before me. Cheap hairpiece, pale skin, watery eyes, yellow polyester necktie. Definitely not my type.

  "This, uh, certainly is a first for us. Harmmph! We've never had a, uh, black person stay here before."

  "Life is full of surprises. just remember: Dr. King would be proud of you."

  "Oh, yes indeed. Yes indeed. He, uh, will behave himself, won't he? I mean, he seems awfully big . . ."

  "Yes and no, Mr. Featherstone. Yes, he is awfully big. But not as big as he is mean. And no, he will not behave himself, not if he feels slighted. Do you follow me?"

  He stiffened at this.

  "It is Glendale's right to refuse admittance to anyone who might threaten —"

  "I see. Why don't you walk down the corridor and tell that to Mr. Summers? Now do you want this check?"

  He took it, handed me a receipt, and returned to his office. No doubt he wished he'd never gotten out of bed. I walked down the hallway to say good-bye to Mike. They'd put him at the end of the wing, in a corner room with two exposures. Outside, the ground was covered with patches of snow. It was sunny and cold, and Mike could look out his windows and see groves of birch trees. Cardinals and goldfinches perched in the trees and called to each other. Summers was in bed. He looked tired and peaceful.

  "I'll be back this evening with a tape player and some jazz and blues, okay?"

  He nodded. He hadn't said ten words to me all morning.

  Finally he rolled up on one elbow and seemed to stare at me.

  "Thanks Doc," he said softly, and fell back onto the pillow. His eyes were shiny. I crept out of the room. For some strange reason, I felt happier than I had in weeks. Moe was right after all. Hell, I would've signed a five-figure check.

  I arrived at the Concord Professional Building in time for my first patient. While I was waiting for the local to take hold, I had Susan get Brian Hannon on the phone. I explained to him I had an idea for determining who shot Roantis. Could the department get in touch with all the nearby airports catering to small private aircraft and find out which planes had arrived and departed in the four-day period two days before and after the shooting?

  "That's a lot of work, Doc. I also kind of doubt they'd cooperate. Can you narrow it a bit further?"

  "Then ask for info on all small planes arriving from and returning to points west of the Mississippi. That'll eliminate three fourths of the aircraft at least."

  "Well, maybe. But don't expect this as a regular thing."

  "Course not, Brian. I know how busy you are. What are you working on now? Eight down, or three across?"

  "That's not funny."

  * * *

  "Gin," said Mike Summers, and laid down his hand. "Haw! Caught you with a boodle, didn't I?"

  He raked up the cards and began to shuffle them. I poured him another hot cocoa out of my steel thermos. We were sitting in his tiny room at Glendale Hospital listening to vintage Duke Ellington on the portable recorder.

  "So you say it wasn't a week after the first visit to the village, but only four days later that you returned there?"

  "Right. Roantis could speak their lingo pretty good. He also can speak French real good too. A lot of the Vietnamese still spoke French, you know. He could always talk to them. I don't know how he learned Khmer, or whatever it was. I knew Larry Jenkins could speak it. He was the best of all of us."

  "That's what everybody says, Mike. So Roantis was the only one to speak to old Siu Lok?"

  "Uh·huh. Don't know all of what they said, either. But the old chief did give us a big share of the community loot."

  "And what was that loot?"

  "Gold and jewels. I guess the official term is ‘precious stones' They wadn't all shined up yet. They were rough, you know, like plain rocks. But anyway, they was precious all right: I cashed in my share for almost eight hundred bucks in Saigon."

  "Did you ever see what Roantis carried in his pack afterward?"

  Summers's face clouded over in confusion. He shook his head back and forth slowly.

  "You never saw an interesting . . . art object?"

  "Naw. Nothin' like that. Hell, we went into his ruck coupla times for some shit we needed. He had the same stuff as us. Sides, I wouldn't want no art object anyhow. Just the loot."

  "And Ken Vilarde? What did he carry away from the village?"

  Summers shrugged his big shoulders and began to shuffle the cards again. I let the whole thing drop. But a suspicion was beginning to grow in my mind.

  "Do you have any idea where Ken Vilarde might be now?"

  "No idea. No idea at all. We weren't that close. His big buddy, besides Roantis, was Jusuelo. Jusuelo was Puerto Rican. From the city of Mayaguez. I remember the name of the place because I was still in the service when that cargo ship, the Mayaguez, got captured. That's how I remembered the name of the town. You might try Jusuelo if you want Vilarde."

  "Can't get a line on either one of them."

  "Discard, Doc."

  I did, and was about to discard the entire line of investigation too, except for one more question.

  "Would any of the Ducks turn against Roantis and try to kill him?"

  He looked up and stared into my eyes, wearing a little frown.

  "No. The Daisy Ducks was a mean outfit. Highly trained and deadly. But we was loyal to each other. Hundret percent. We had to be. Any other way and we all woulda died out there in the boonies."

  "What do you know about Bill Royce?"

  "Mystery man. A puzzle. He what you call a . . . can't think of the word. Somebody who always want things to be right."

  "Perfectionist?"

  "Naw. Idealist. That's what Royce was. He was good, and careful. I don't think he liked to fight as much as some of the guys—as much as I used to. But he was real smart. Knew what he was doin'. But I know what we was doin' in Cambodia really bothered him. Got to him. See Doc, Daisy Duck's a mean ol' bitch. Like, she on the rag alla time, you know? Well, a lotta what we done, we just destroyed right and left. A lot of villagers and civilians got it too."

  "I know. And Royce began to feel guilty about it and eventually had a breakdown."

  "Yeah. I felt pretty close to coming unglued over there more than once . . . and I'm a pretty mean dude, if you hadn'ta noticed. He kinda went off the deep end. I think he in some military nuthouse, what I heard."

  "He's out. He got sprung last summer."

  "Hmmph! So you think it musta been one of the Ducks? Is that it? Why not somebody else?"

  "It has something to do with Siu Lok's loot. But there are some things I can't tell you yet. I promised Roantis. If we assume for a minute that one of the Ducks is gunning for Roantis, would Royce be a better bet than the others?"

  He glared at me from over his fanned-out hand of cards.

  "Am I a suspect too?"

  "No. At least I'm pretty sure you're not. I got in touch with you and Fred Kaunitz for help."

  "You don't th
ink Freddie coulda done it?"

  I was silent for a second or two.

  "Do you?"

  His eyes swept over the cards in his hand and he rearranged them, closed the hand, and fanned it out again.

  "Ain't no tellin', is there? just no tellin'."

  "Why did you lay down that seven, Mike? You know I'm saving sevens," I said, picking up his discard and sliding it into my hand. He grinned at me.

  "I hear Royce is back down in North Carolina somewhere. Up in the mountains, I think. Should I go track him down?"

  "Why not? But your best bet would be finding Vilarde."

  "I'm beginning to get the feeling Ken Vilarde isn't around anymore," I said.

  "Could be, Doc. Could be. Gin. "

  Twenty minutes later, I rose to go. The nurse had just given Mike a hefty bolus of chloral hydrate and he was fading fast. I waited at the doorway until he was almost under. Now would be the time to catch him, I thought. I opened the door and turned back, as if the question were only an afterthought.

  "By the way, Mike, who's Daisy?"

  "Haw-haw! Why she's —"

  He caught himself, turned to me, and tried to sit up in bed. The pill wouldn't let him.

  "Like you say, Doc. Some things I can't tell you yet. Now just rewind that tape to ‘Mood Indigo' and lemme cop some Zs. Catch you later."

  12

  A WEEK TO THE DAY after he was committed to Glendale, I went up the road to Carlisle and sprang Mike Summers. He had lost twelve and a half pounds, mostly of intercellular fluid, and his blood pressure had dropped considerably. Most important, he no longer had to live with a drink in his hand, and he had eaten huge quantities of nutritious food during his stay. In short, he was a new man, and although the bill had been hefty, I considered it one of the best investments I had ever made.

  "I'm restless now, Doc. I feel good, you know? I wanta run around a little —"

  "That's just where we're going," I said. We stopped at the house only long enough for a big lunch, which Mary and Mike ate. I don't eat lunch anymore; three squares a day in modern America will turn you into a blimp in no time. I just had coffee and a small dish of yogurt. We packed the rest of Mike's things and took off for Somerville. There was a vacancy in the YMCA stall there, and they had agreed, based on a strong recommendation from Roantis, to hire Summers as a temporary staff member in exchange for a room at the Y and a small salary. It was perfect. We had him settled into the room in less than an hour. I loaned him my cassette player and a large selection of tapes. The room had a television, so he was pretty well set.

  Then I showed him the gym and workout rooms. I had run on the suspended running track above the gym before. It was nice and springy—twenty-nine laps to the mile. I left Mike circling it at a shuffle that was gradually speeding up to a slow lope. I reminded him I'd pick him up the next evening for dinner at our place, and I left.

  Driving back to Concord along Route 2, I kept thinking of Fred Kaunitz at the controls of his airplane. With the skill and savvy he had, honed by years in the air force, there seemed to be no place he couldn't go. I turned off on a side road and went over to Route 2A, then took the exit for Hanscom Field. Hanscom is primarily a military airfield and houses a lot of air force people and their dependents. But part of it, I knew, was reserved for private civilian aircraft and a few commercial charter flights. I entered the base and followed the signs to the civilian field. As I entered the civilian gate, I noticed the guard booth at the entrance to the military field. The guard wore a blue beret. I took special notice of him now, since both Kaunitz and Royce had been air force commandos. Kaunitz and Royce. Hmmmmm. Both American WASPs, the only two out of the original eight Daisy Ducks. All the rest were black, Hispanic, and/or foreign born. I was trying to think of the sociological significance of this. Also, both were nice country boys. Southerners. Well raised. Well educated. Outdoorsy types. They had a lot in common, yet Kaunitz never seemed to indicate they were close. At least, he never told me. And now Bill Royce was out and around . . . I parked and went into the main building, where I found seven people, one of whom, James McGrevan, was eager to help.

  "You want to know if we keep a record of all planes that use this field? The answer is no," he said almost apologetically. "A lot of them just come in to refuel or check a misfiring engine cylinder, then take off again. You can understand that if you're in the air and your engine starts sounding a little funny, you don't waste time checking it out."

  "Right," I said. "But how about a plane that spends the night here? Don't they sign in?"

  "Oh sure, for a tie-down. They pay for-a tie-down in advance. The rate varies according to the size of the aircraft. They leave us a local number where we can reach them. Then we have these . . . "

  He slid a slip of yellow paper over to me on the counter. It had a Shell Oil logo on top and a list of instructions underneath, much like a service repair order from a mechanic's garage.

  "This is an aircraft service order. Almost always, when a pilot ties down, he'll want some things done. Maybe some fuel, an oil check, maybe have his tires looked at, things like that. Well, we fill this out, he looks it over and signs it. When we're through, he keeps a copy and so do we."

  "Ahh. And how far back do you keep the copies?"

  "A month. If we don't lose them in the meantime."

  "Oh. So you would have no idea what planes came and went back in late December?"

  "Oh no. No way."

  "Well, don't these planes, wherever they're going, don't they have to chart a course or something so they don't collide with other aircraft? I mean, we've got a crowded sky around here."

  He then explained briefly some of the numerous air navigation laws, which were complex and strict indeed, as well they should be.

  "But see, these are all procedures. The only thing officially written down is a flight plan, which tells the tower, that's us, where the plane is headed, and along what course, at what altitude, what time of day, estimated time of arrival, and so on."

  "That sounds helpful. How far back do you keep those?"

  "We don't keep them. By law, they must be canceled within thirty minutes after the pilot reaches his destination. If not, we send out planes looking for the downed aircraft. Needless to say, if we have to send out a search party for a guy who simply forgot to cancel his flight plan, we're not happy about it." I inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times, summing up all the various and it sundry information in my noggin.

  "So, what the whole thing boils down to," I said wearily, "is that these small planes can go anywhere they want and leave no tracks."

  James McGrevan thought for a few seconds before replying.

  "Uh-huh," he said, rubbing his chin, "I guess that's about right."

  "What about during landing and takeoff? Aren't they in radio contact?"

  "Certainly. They must get tower clearance for both."

  "What about just flying near an airfield? Don't they have to say they're flying in the airspace of a certain town or airfield?"

  "There are lots of regulations about that. One thing: most planes now—even the smallest ones—have a transponder. This device emits a powerful radio signal which is picked up by the nearest airport tower. The tower can therefore track the aircraft accurately and warn the pilot if he's not where he should be."

  "Is the pilot required to turn on the transponder whenever he's near a town or airfield?"

  "No. It's for his safety as much as anyone's. Most pilots have their transponders on all the time."

  "Mr. McGrevan, if a pilot were willing to take the risk of flying without instruments, perhaps even without running lights, and fly low, who could find him?"

  "Nobody. But flying by the seat of your pants can get you killed."

  "I'm sure it could."

  "Unless you know how to do it," he added. I looked up and saw him grinning.

  "Do you?"

  "Oh yeah. I flew FACs in Nam. Those little two-seaters. FAC stands for forward air controller. We f
lew those little Cessnas and Beechcrafts to direct artillery fire and do nighttime reconnaissance work. We had some of them modified for circling over a target for eighteen hours or more. Others were modified to run silently, with no engine noise, so you could skim the treetops at night without alerting the enemy. That way, Charlie didn't know we were watching him."

  "How far can a small plane go without refueling? What's the range?"

  "Standard for a little two-seater is about three hundred miles, or three hours flying time at a little over a hundred per. A four-seater goes between four and five hours at a slightly higher speed, so figure about five hundred miles range. Course, a four-seater retractable—hell, you can go seven, eight hundred, maybe more. But if you wanted, you could easily take out some of the rear seating, or use the extra cargo space to install an auxiliary fuel tank. If you did that, hell, you could fly from here to Paris. Remember, that's just what Lindbergh did fifty years ago."

  I thanked him and left, having learned one reason private planes are so popular: you can go anywhere fast, return, and leave no trail.

  Back home, Mary and I went over her trip to Schenectady to visit her mother.

  "You're sure you don't want to come?" she asked.

  "No, I can't. Remember what Moe said, Mary, and our talk. I think we both need a little space right now. A week or so should do it fine. And since we're redoing the office building, I'd like to oversee it, at least at the beginning. Then I thought I'd go down to the Breakers for a week and fix the screens."

  She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her nails, the way people do when they're preoccupied.

  "Charlie, remember when you asked me if I was having an affair?"

  The words went through my gut like an artillery shell. My heart skipped two beats. Steady, Adams.

  "Uh-huh. Want to tell me?"

  "No, dummy. I want to ask you. Are you?"

  "No. No way."

  "You and Janice aren't —"

  "No. Absolutely not."

  "Then what's wrong?" She was biting her nails now, and there was wet on them.