by Farris, John
“Psssh,” Nussbaum went, disconsolately. He was perched on the yoke at the captain’s station. “Don’t take my advice for nothing.”
Evelyn raised the hatch. There was a perpendicular steel ladder below. She climbed down into the snug communications room under the cockpit.
“Nussbaum is coming!” the parrot squawked, and followed her.
Next to a bank of monitors—radio, radar—there was a narrow door to the forward cargo hold. Nussbaum gripped a rung of the ladder and peered over Evelyn’s shoulder.
“I don’t like this. Ve shouldn’t disturb him, it’s a mischief. On the other hand, vhat’s to lose? Ve’re going to crash anyvay.”
“What are you mumbling about?”
“Your husband, the pilot.”
“My husband is dead.”
“There’s dead, and there’s not so dead.”
“I hate parrots,” Evelyn said, and went through the doorway into the cargo hold. Nussbaum remained hunched on the ladder until she screamed again.
“Ay-yay-yay! Now you are satisfied maybe?”
There was a crashing of things, as if Evelyn were taking out her fright and fury on stored luggage. Then her face appeared in the doorway. Nussbaum cringed at the sight.
“I want to know ... where they all are! I want to know ... what this is about! Talk to me, you stupid bird!”
“Maybe if ve eat a little something, it vill calm our nerves.”
Evelyn’s mouth formed a smile, but her eyes were dreadful.
“What did you mean? About Zack—my husband? What was it you said?”
“There’s dead, and there’s not so dead.”
“Meaning?”
“Veil—he’s not here. But he’s not there yet, either. Until you both get to vhere you are going, vhich is, of course, a cemetery.”
“Get this straight—bird—”
“Nussbaum, if you vouldn’t mind. Might as veil be friends, nuh?”
“You should have seen Zack, the way I saw him. Squashed. That’s the only word to describe how he looked. He went off a four-hundred-foot cliff in his stupid little car. i was always afraid to drive with him. All those speeding tickets didn’t teach him a thing. He’s dead, all right. Crate’s in there. Coffin’s in the crate. Dead.”
“Go, try. Vhat do you think ve are looking like in a couple hours if ve go flying through downtown Chicago vith no pilot.”
Evelyn wiped away something yellowish from the corner of her mouth. She had violent hiccups again. In between heaves she trembled, orgiastically.
“Ha-ha. Ha!”
“Look around, there’s tools maybe. Vhat’s to lose? Open the crate.”
“What do I do then? Say, ‘Zack, wake up, we need you to fly the plane?’ ”
“No, you can’t vake him. To you, he is dead forever. But to me, that’s a different story. I have the power to bring him back to life. A few hours only. But how long are ve needing him for?”
“You want me to break open the crate?” Evelyn clenched her shaking hands and rolled her eyes.
“After you have done that, leave me here and go, make preparations. You vill need ashes, bread crumbs, salt. A bone or two. Those things you vill find in the galley.”
“What f-for?”
“A matter of protection. Perhaps there is nothing to vorry about. On the other hand, he could be hungry vhen I call him out. The salt, the bread vill satisfy him. Othervise—”
“I don’t like—uh—otherwise. I d-don’t like any of this! Honestly, I just don’t want to see Z-Zack again.”
“You should be convinced by now. There is no alternative.”
Evelyn stared at Nussbaum and smiled earnestly, childishly. “Are you under a spell of some kind? Is that it? Are we under a spell? I never believed in those things. I hated storybooks. I thought they were lies. I never looked under the bed before I went to sleep at night. I was a h-happy and well-balanced child. I ate my vegetables. I had a puppy.”
“Ve can talk later. Now you must look for tools to open the crate.”
“H-human remains,” Evelyn said bleakly, hiccuping. But she soon located a toolbox and went back into the cargo hold, where the temperature was twenty degrees colder. There was a crowbar in the toolbox, a hammer. She broke into the crate, laying bare the bronzed metal casket. When she finished, two of her fingers were bleeding from the quick. She stared at the casket, unsteady on her numbed feet, too exhausted to cry.
“New-new-Nussssbaummmm!”
“Coming,” the parrot said. He had found a swatch of black cloth somewhere, and wore it draped like a shawl over his narrow shoulders.
“Do you think he—can you—”
“Mreye/i. Go now. Prepare yourself. Vhen you have filled your pockets, rub the thumb of your right hand three times behind your ear vhile making a circle in the air vith the index finger of your left hand.”
“How many times?”
“Three also. Did I forget to say that? Oy vehl If I don’t do this right, such a curse I’m bringing on our heads.”
“I think I—I’m going to throw up.”
“You’ve got the time. A miracle worker I’m not. The truth is, I never did this before. Book-smart is one thing. But raising the dead—”
Evelyn scrambled to reach the head in the first-class compartment.
She had no idea of how long she was there, sitting coldly on the small floor, all retched out, too dizzy to lift her head. Too weak to scream anymore. There was a noticeable bump, as if the Airbus had run over something in the road, a small tilting; then they leveled off again and everything was as it had been.
Evelyn got to her feet and edged out of the bathroom, dimly hoping to see that the passengers had returned to their seats. No such luck. The movie was still playing, Stallone pitting his biceps against another arm-wrestler. The huge plane droned eastward, pilotless. Or so she assumed. But she had to go find out.
“Nussbaum?” she called, when she reached the front row in first class. The door to the cockpit was standing open a few inches, but she couldn’t see inside.
It was no longer sunny in the plane. The sky had darkened. There was a dull red glow in the massing clouds outside the window where she had been sitting.
Evelyn approached the cockpit and looked in.
At least one crew member was back at the controls, sitting in the captain’s seat.
“Thank God!”
He turned and looked at her and grinned. But his lips, when he spoke, were too stiff to move. The grin didn’t change either. It was permanent, molded in place by the fingers of the undertaker. Too bad they couldn’t have done more with the side of his head that had been so badly smashed.
“Hello, Evie,” he said, winking. He had only one eye to wink with.
“Zackkkkkkk!”
“Can’t talk now,” he said, grinning like a badly carved jack-o’-lantern. “We’re almost there. Taking her down now.”
“Down? Where?” Through the windscreen she saw smoke, and what appeared to be the pit of an active volcano.
“Straight to hell, Evie,” Zack said pleasantly, and turned his attention to the controls. “Three-quarter flaps,” he called out. “Air speed two-seventy.”
“No, Zack, no! You son of a bitch, you can’t do this to me! Nussbaum, where are you? I want him back in his coffin, and right now!”
Zack put the Airbus into a steep dive. Evelyn had to hold on to keep from falling down. She could see flames leaping high from the surface of seething molten rock in the maw of the volcano. Intense heat clouded the windscreen, blistered the paint on the nose of the Airbus.
“Damn you, Zachary, pull up!” She looked around frantically. There was a fire extinguisher clamped to the wall just above her head. She reached for the heavy steel cylinder and pulled it down with one hand.
“I don’t deserve to go to hell! I was a good wife. It’s not my fault I fell in love with Clive! Those things happen! You had a hundred cheap tramps and all I ever had was Clive! I tell you I’m not go
ing with you! I killed you once, and I’ll do it again!”
He was turning, slowly, to look at her once more with that artificial, intolerable grin. Just as she’d done in the kitchen of their home, Evelyn swung the fire extinguisher hard, this time to the right side of his head. But Zack didn’t go sprawling on the quarry tile floor with blood running from his wounds, nothing but the whites of his eyes showing, no—
This time Zack’s head came off, rebounded from the slanted windscreen, and flew breezily past her out of the cockpit, the grin still fixed on his waxen face.
The rest of Zack Hammons remained strapped in the captain’s seat, and one bloodless hand pushed hard on the throttles; with his left foot jamming down on the rudder, Zack put the big plane into a destabilizing yaw. Evelyn lost her balance; her head struck the bulkhead.
She smelled smoke and something worse: brimstone, perhaps. She heard a scream that might have been her own scream, or the hot wind outside the plane. They were going down so fast she was pinned to the floor, unable to breathe. A light flashed in her eyes, flashed again; she struggled to get up and reach the controls before—
—
“Take it easy, Mrs. Hammons.”
Zack? No. Why would he call her “Mrs. Hammons”? She heard the shrill screaming, she had inhaled smoke or fumes that nauseated her. The light again, in her eyes, blinding her.
They had crashed, that had to be it. But not in hell. Her vision of hell had been some sort of nightmare or hallucination.
“Am I—all right?” she said, but couldn’t hear herself because of the high-pitched scream. Wherever they were, they were rocking along at a good clip.
“You’re going to be all right, Mrs. Hammons. Probably it was the medication you took with your glass of wine. Happens sometimes.”
Evelyn opened her eyes. Daylight. She winced. A face materialized out of the glare inches above her.
“Where am I?” she asked the paramedic.
“Ambulance. On your way to Douglas County Hospital. The pilot made an emergency landing in Omaha when you became so ill. They’ll probably keep you in the hospital for a a day or two, for observation.”
“Then you belong to us,” a familiar voice said, and Evelyn turned her head painfully. She was lying flat on a stretcher or gurney. Her hands, her feet were restrained.
“Mr. Bronstein!”
“Hello, Mrs. Hammons.”
“What are you—what do you mean by—”
“Maybe I should explain it to her, Jake,” someone else said. A woman. Bronstein moved aside to make room for her.
“You—you’re the flight attendant! Maureen?”
“That’s right,” the green-eyed woman said. “Not my normal occupation. I’m a vice-president of Weststates Insurance. Frauds Division. Mr. Bronstein here is our chief investigator.”
“Oh ... God. I—what did you do to me?”
“Do to you, Mrs. Hammons?” Maureen glanced at Bronstein with a slight quizzical smile. “Nothing at all. We only listened to you. You had a great deal to say that was of interest to us.”
Bronstein held up a Dictamite. “Whatever it was you were taking for your nerves loosened your tongue quite a bit. I’ve got it all here.”
“Clive!” Evelyn wailed. “I want Clive!”
Bronstein glanced at his watch. “I’m afraid it’ll be a week or so until the two of you are arraigned, which is the next time you’ll be seeing him. We had Clive picked up fifteen minutes ago in San Francisco.”
“You ... you dirty bastards! Trapped me. I’m denying everything. I won’t be convicted. I deny it! I never killed him. It was an accident. That son of a bitch. I’m so glad he’s dead. How did you know? How could you possibly—”
“Mrs. Hammons,” Maureen said, “everybody who commits murder and tries to cover it up thinks they’re being very clever. But we’ve seen it all. Didn’t you and your boyfriend ever read The Postman Always Rings Twice? I don’t have anything against you, dear. It’s just my job to save the company money. With good behavior you’ll be out in twelve or fifteen years.”
“Which one of you—drugged me? You can’t get away with that! It’s entrapment.”
Maureen said, “It was a voluntary confession, Mrs. Hammons. You told him everything.”
Evelyn stared at Jake Bronstein. “What did I say to you? On my mother’s grave, I never told you anything!”
“You’re right about that,” Bronstein said. “It wasn’t me you spilled your guts to. But we’ve got some pretty resourceful operatives at Weststates Insurance.”
—
Maureen and Jake Bronstein were having a drink at the hotel bar in Omaha before catching a plane back to the coast.
A customer was having a fuss with the maître d’ by the entrance. Wasn’t dressed properly, something like that. Maureen looked casually over one shoulder.
“Here he comes,” she said.
Weststates Insurance Company’s ace investigator swaggered into the bar and took a stool next to Bronstein.
“Sunflower seeds,” he said to the bartender. He was wearing a purple necktie that was much too long for him.
The bartender looked him over. “Sorry, bud, we’re not allowed to serve parrots in here. You know how it is.”
The bird flew up and closed its beak on the bartender’s nose.
“Owww, owww, okay, sunflower seeds it is!”
“All around,” the parrot said, settling back on the barstool, his pinfeathers sticking out in a show of indignation.
“Cool off, Rocky,” Maureen advised him. “You’ve got to do something about that temper of yours.”
“I don’t like the way they treat me in tank towns like this. Besides, I’m freezing my butt off. Omaha in January! Give me a break.”
“Got a new assignment for you, Rocky. Warm climate. Guatemala, as a matter of fact.”
“Guatemala, huh?” Rocky said, dipping his beak to the plate of unhulled sunflower seeds the bartender put in front of him. Satisfied that they were fresh and of good quality, he cracked several and passed the plate to Maureen and Jake. “I’ve got some relatives down that way. Several thousand, maybe.”
“But who keeps score?” Bronstein said kiddingly.
“Watch yourself,” Rocky said, his feathers standing out even more. He was in some kind of mood tonight. Bronstein tried flattery.
“You were great today, boychik. Three rabbis on my mother’s side, you could have fooled any of them. It was a pleasure working with you.”
“When you need the best, you get the best,” Rocky said, mollified.
The telephone behind the bar rang. The bartender picked up.
“You Rocky?” he asked.
“Tell her I’ll meet her in twenty minutes,” Rocky said.
“So that’s where you disappeared to this afternoon,” Bronstein chided him.
“Who’s the lucky lady?” Maureen asked with an arched eyebrow.
“A Rainbow Lorikeet from Australia. She’s the only one of her kind at Ogletree’s Exotic Pets. For what that’s worth.”
“Stepping out of your class tonight, aren’t you, Rocky?” Bronstein said.
“Every other parrot I met today was either dead or molting. What the hell. It’s January, and I’m in Omaha.”
“Mazel tov,” Maureen said, salting her sunflower seeds and crunching them between her perfect white teeth.
The Guardians:
A Novel
• 1 •
Major Starne Kinsaker was a tall man with a stiff, dour, seamed face, straight yellow eyes and straight lips, and a neck shrinking down into his collar like a turkey’s, or, more accurately, a vulture’s neck. His hair was straight and gray and dying off; his forehead was paisley with age spots, and his cheekbones shone like weathered, ivory knobs. But his hands were large; they looked strong and reliable. Jim Practice wasn’t sure how old the Major was—somewhere in his late sixties. He wore high, obviously expensive horse boots, and jodhpurs, as if he had just come in from a ride.
He had rung the bell outside the opaque glass doors of the Major’s office suite in the Osage State Bank Building, expecting at least a token delay before being admitted, but the Major had answered the buzzer himself.
“Please come in, Mr. Practice.”
Apparently the Major hadn’t gone to much expense in furnishing the anteroom. There was a desk with a gray typewriter stand beside it and three straight chairs against one wall. The lone adornment was a narrow vase full of wilting iris on the desk. As he followed, Practice wondered if Kinsaker had some sort of unhappy surprise waiting so close to the Governor’s Day Dinner. After considering the possibility, Practice disallowed it. If the Major had found a hold that would effectively break John Guthrie’s back, he would go ahead and break it without ceremony, or make his deal, which would amount to the same thing. Jim Practice would not have been called in either way.
Major Kinsaker’s office was a large one, and by contrast with the cheerless room outside it had been furnished with a great deal of care. Six windows overlooked the center of the city. Most of the furniture had the look of heirlooms. There was even a tall cabinet clock behind the Major’s desk, between the windows.
“Will you sit down?” Kinsaker asked, his hand resting on the high back of a leather chair in the middle of the carpet, facing the desk.
“Thank you, Major. Do you mind if I build a smoke?”
“Not at all.” The Major bent his gaze on Practice with a hint of interest as he took out cigarette papers and tobacco. “Not many men go to such trouble anymore,” he said, as if he approved of the ritual.
“I suppose I’m contrary in some ways,” Practice replied. He liked the routine; it was comforting to him. He also told himself that he enjoyed the taste of the cigarettes he made.
