by Dean Ing
At last, she traced the outline of his lips with her tongue and lay a hand on his cheek. "I don't know about you, ol' golfing buddy," she said, "but I think it's time for bed."
"I'm happy here," he said.
"Me, too, but unless you came sneakily prepared, safe sex is twenty feet from here in my nightstand."
"Very careful planning," he said, swiveling up, pulling her with him. Why mention the condoms in his pocket?
"It's true; I've been planning this. I haven't had that many lovers, but a woman thinks about these things if she has any sense at all," she said, leaning against him, setting their course for the bedroom with a lightly furtive, unladylike grasp on his buttocks.
They undressed each other in semidarkness, unhurried, choosing special places to favor with lips and tongues. And encumbered by that forearm cast, they both fumbled now and again, accommodating it, and finally it was of no importance, and when Gary Landis fell asleep beside the faintly snoring Janelle at three in the morning, he was smiling, thinking, Nothing in the world that's this good should be this safe.
17
MAY 1994
By Friday, Romana had five spindly avocado trees arranged in the dining room of the "annex," the supposedly vacant house a stone's throw from The Place. Though she knew that Andy was as familiar as she with the tunnel's peculiarities, she led the way from the tunnel's entrance in her garage, hidden among storage shelves, in the hard shadows of low-wattage bulbs. They climbed the steps of padded concrete block and passed through the annex's pantry into its kitchen. The house boasted no water or gas service, though they had extended a heavy Romex electric cable through the tunnel for essential operations in the garage - which was no longer the usual article, its single window covered by foil-backed battens.
Their route was a nuisance that increased with the years but that was one of Romana's rules: both doors into the house itself were locked from the inside and you never came near it from the outside during daylight hours. In two of its rooms the windows were blocked by old construction materials, chiefly pieces of broken wall-board; a prowler would not be much intrigued by that. In other rooms the windows were clear, revealing bare floors, dust-covered and clearly untenanted. Andy had done this bit of stagecraft because there was no way to tell when some reservation kid might be watching, and thinking.
Andy nodded as he walked around the avocado saplings in their big containers, fingering glossy leaves that seemed too large for the trees. "Good thing they get sun through the skylights," he said. "You must've had a time wrestling these fellas up the steps."
"I didn't," she said, and saw his surprised glance. "I waited until midnight and came in through the hangar." He stared at her for another moment, then shrugged silently. It was not a silence that implied praise. "Andrew, they were simply too heavy. It's not as if I had you here to help." Even to Romana, that sounded defensive. Why should I justify myself to my assistant? she thought. I may break my own rules if I choose; and besides, the hangar door is not the same as the others. Damn him . . .
"May I make a suggestion," he said into the oppressive quiet, kneeling on the wooden floor beside trees scarcely her own height.
This was proper deference. "Of course, Andrew."
"The tunnel runs below here. Water runoff from these pots can drip down through the floorboards, maybe do some damage."
"That is an observation, not a suggestion." Her smile was superior. She intended it to be.
His look, with that primly tightened mouth, was typical of him, these days. After a small pause, he went on: "I suggest we slide some plastic under the pots and border it with wooden strips as a dam. We can do it now. Don't you still have some of those spruce strips in the hangar?"
"Aircraft-quality Sitka spruce? I certainly do, and we're not going to waste it when any old wood will serve. Wait, I'm sure we have some leftover pine from the wing fixtures." He nodded, turned toward a door that led directly into the garage - now the hangar.
Romana followed, moving into the big arena that was entirely padded with batts of insulation, not so much against cold as against the sounds of electrical tools. The hangar was filled with evening shadows and, to Romana's ever-present satisfaction, with her one expensive toy: her Chamois, its wings spanning the entire area, its deep charcoal-tinted skin seeming blacker than black in near darkness. The place smelled faintly as always of gasoline and rubber and of the sweetish, artificial-flavor odors of expensive polymers. She inhaled with a pleasure that was almost sexual.
During two summers as an undergraduate, Andy had sweltered with her in the big garage of the annex, turning a score of kit materials, including thin-wall alloy tubing and epoxy and precisely graded spruce, into her most prized possession. Now that garage was her hangar. It was true that Romana did not make as much use of the Chamois as she might; but the first time she had seen this site, she'd known what it could mean: her own private landing strip.
In early childhood, Skander Masaryk had been imprinted with the urge not only to fly, but to build and fly real airplanes. A technical education had only strengthened this resolve, but the goal had seemed unrealistic until the day the adult Romana saw that macadam roadbed next to a vacant house, and what she saw was a surfaced runway aimed across a meadow toward Millerton Lake. After that, it was only a matter of time, and of the perfect choice of designs. For all her expertise, Romana had always known she was not capable of designing a high-tech aircraft from scratch. Her Chamois was the nearest thing to it.
With a runway only a few hundred yards long, she had realized that takeoffs would be almost as dangerous as landings. For a traditional light aircraft, either would have been suicidal here. But the recent ultralight aircraft craze, with new materials and special engines no heavier than a child, had given hobbyists their choice of designs for very short runways.
Most of those designs looked more like kites than aircraft. Some could be purchased whole, ready to fly; some as kits, with plans; and some as plans only. The great majority of ultralights were limited to a single occupant, lacked a true enclosed cockpit, and could not exceed roughly sixty miles or so. But here and there, a Taylor or a LeGarre in America or a Shaw in England might create a design that begged for new definitions. Such a design was the Chamois, a two-place craft so unusual that most enthusiasts shied away like nervous horses. To date, only a handful of Chamois kits had been sold. Fewer still had been built.
It couldn't be that good, said the wary; and who wanted to risk swiveling an engine while its propeller was gulping air?
Her expertise in flying had been rusty, but returned quickly after a few harrowing trials that used up a lot of that testosterone. Now, with several years of highly illegal flights behind her in this unregistered wraith, Romana knew that the Chamois was that good - though truly, it could kill you instantly if you swiveled that forward engine while moving too slowly. Named for a goatlike alpine antelope that could leap high into mountain air, the Chamois had a short fuselage pod with a slender tubular extension back to its inverted vee tail, its wing mounted above the cabin. Occupants sat in tandem. It was pushed by one engine mounted low at the rear of the cabin, and pulled by an identical engine mounted very high just ahead of the wing. Each of those engines weighed only sixty pounds, and even with a wingspan of twenty-six feet the Chamois was very close to the weight of an ultralight.
But the most astonishing thing about a Chamois was the ability, like its namesake, to leap from the ground at a trifling speed, yet cruise at well over a hundred knots. A Piper Cub will take off or land at fifty miles an hour; a Chamois, with that forward engine swiveled almost vertically, will do so at twenty; even less when facing a breeze. And once that forward engine has been swiveled back to the horizontal, the overpowered Chamois can outrun its competitors.
Because most of its flights were at night, the instrument panel of this particular Chamois had cost more than the airframe. Finding a suitable landing site without those instruments would have presented Romana with a genuine nightma
re. By now, with over five hundred hours' flight time in this snarling little brute, Romana no longer feared it. Even Andy had developed a modest proficiency with it. But, as usual, Mom was the master.
Romana stood, in reverie, lost in her reflections, as Andy rummaged among the materials ranged neatly on wall brackets. She turned only when he asked, "How's this?"
Though carefully chosen and milled on their machines, it was only inch-square pine in varying lengths.
"I shouldn't have to tell you everything," she replied, implying, it will do. He mumbled something under his breath and stumped back through the kitchen, taking a cordless Makita drill and small screws from the workbench.
She followed silently, bringing a plastic dust cover for the job at hand, and did not ask him what he'd said; it would only end in delaying what she wanted him to do. And central to their relationship was - had always been - his uses to her. . .A frustrated cabinetmaker, Andy had become more adept with wood than Romana by the time she had given him his first flight instruction. No doubt that skill had a lot to do with the way those drama amateurs clamored for him - or, at any rate, so he claimed.
Romana gave the Valley Players some thought as she helped shift heavy containers and spread the plastic sheeting. She had attended one performance the previous year, making mental notes while watching the antics of a striking middle-aged woman in A Flea In Her Ear. Later, she had questioned Andy as pleasantly as possible, carefully complimentary, probing the depth of his devotion to this foolishness. Too much devotion could mean trouble.
How could they possibly make a profit, given the audience? As she surmised, they couldn't. That tight-girdled doxy with the funniest lines was also their financial backer. Why was Andy, a natural actor, kept behind the scenes? He had laughed at that, forcing Romana to hold her temper. No one kept him there, he said; he had refused even the smallest parts because he wanted no one but his mom to know just how good he was when he took a role. He could learn much about the craft without drawing attention to himself.
She had always claimed he was expected to carry on her work; very well, he would become superb at it. Your ambition is to be better than I, she had added to herself. Not in your lifetime, little man, no matter how I must manage that. It pleases me that you think of me as your mother, and that you imagine I consider you my son. Always, always, Romana liked to have an edge. One never knew when it might be needed for cutting.
Another casual question: Learning his craft behind the scenes, how did he like working with pretty young women, and attractive older ones? Surely one or another of them had set her cap for Andy - Romana had actually used that phrase, teasingly.
And he had smiled, and replied that their invitations were transparent enough but they were, after all, only "glamourpussy" - and Mom had lectured him on how to deal with that. No problem.
Not even an experienced hotpants who seemed to run the Valley Players? A thorough professional, Andy had insisted. She depended on him but, after all, he'd remarked, she was almost old enough to be his mom.
In some ways, the woman, Aletha Mcsomething, had seemed very familiar; sure of herself, body well maintained and erect, almost masculine in muscle tone, and then Romana had realized that if you described this queen bee in general terms, you were describing Romana herself. And Romana had thought about that for a long, long time. If any woman were ever to draw Andrew Soriano away from her, for whatever purpose, it would not be some vacuous ingénue or diligent worker. It would be a queen bee.
And now Andy was using the woman's car, working with her on weekends. Could he be playing with her as well? She watched him run a screw through a pine batten with the Makita, and knew that while she could surveil the two of them, it would take time better spent on that Sacramento client. Their discussions of sex, back in the days when they'd had them, had always been almost brutally matter-of-fact. He had responded well to that tactic.
"I can finish this later," she said casually. "Screwing pine can't be as much fun as screwing Aletha."
His mouth formed the word "whaaat," but no sound emerged.
"Never mind." But he did mind, flushing angrily as he flung the drill to the floor. "It doesn't matter, Andrew."
"You think I'm crazy? Of course it matters! If I were, wouldn't I have told you? Christ!” He stood up, trembling.
She thought for one terrible instant that he would hit her, and prepared mentally for a wrist-block maneuver. "I don't know," she said, wise enough to speak calmly. "Would you?"
"Until now I would," he replied, seeing her tower above him, rising now, trembling, but, always the dutiful son, imitating her as well as he was able. "Aletha McCarran is a friend, one of several. I couldn't study my craft without that. You think you know it all, Mom, but if you want to keep up with things in the lab, I have to live Outside. That means having a few outside interests. That's just the way it is."
Their eyes were level, yet he would not challenge her gaze. He attempted to stand as her equal, though his downcast glance and the faintly hunched set of his shoulders gave him away. She was still master/mistress here, and she knew it would be necessary to drain him of his anger before enlisting him in her next attempt at surveillance in Sacramento.
"You must maintain your contacts," she said agreeably. "I can understand that." She had not laid a belt over his shoulders for years, but that almost-imperceptible relaxing, lifting his head, verified once again that she could still punish him without a touch. "Let's go back to The Place, Andrew. I want you to hear a tape of our Sacramento client. If you can get a half-day off next Wednesday, this time I think we can get a step ahead of him."
He left the tools where they lay, breathing deeply, trying to recover his equanimity. No, I don't believe you are fucking that woman, she mused silently, yet. She still stands on a pedestal. I wonder if it will be necessary for her to suffer a fatal accident one of these days. And if she does, I wonder how it could be done without your suspecting me. If someone shot her before witnesses, you would probably accuse me. You are a very bright young man, Andrew. Sometimes I wish I had stolen the child of some other migrant worker, one without your rage for independence.
Romana led the way back through her tunnel unafraid of the soft footfalls behind her. Born of bracero laborers, Andy had no memory of any parent but Romana. Now she had become, in intelligence parlance, his handler, and he had become her asset, her creature, her physical extension into a modern high-tech laboratory. Despite that tense moment back in the annex, she remained fully confident. She was still unbeatable, would always remain in control of her creature.
18
MAY 1994
When Gary landed the Cessna on its little home strip in the outskirts of northern Fresno, McMilligan was waiting as promised with a "G" government-furnished, hardtop 'vette. Mac waited until they had hangared the little aircraft to give his fellow agent a close inspection. "Love your perm," he joked, passing his hand an inch above Gary's scalp. As for the forearm: "Who does your casts: Frank Lloyd Wright?"
"Feels like concrete, too," Gary admitted. He started to add that he'd discovered it made a very abrasive third party in a bedroom tussle, but thought better of it. Somehow, making love with Jan was not a topic for sharing with his other friends. He admired Mac's choice of cars as they headed for the center of Fresno and Suite 200, DEA's downtown offices in an unobtrusive two-story structure. "We're seizing a better class of vehicle, I see. You just be glad this wasn't a ragtop." McMilligan smiled at this, nodding; by policy decision, agents did not drive convertibles. "Anybody keep my Camaro's battery up while I was, uh," Gary said, finishing with a silent handwave.
"Diggin' your way up from China," the agent furnished with a short laugh. "Yeah, your heap's movable."
As he drove, the sturdy, sandy-haired McMilligan kept darting glances toward Gary; not furtive, but appraising. "I've been out to that mine shaft. Want to talk about it?"
"Later, maybe. Don't suppose you know whether Visconti wants me back running our con on La Familia
."
"He'll want to tell you. But my take on it is, you've done all the UC work you're going to, for a while. This one was too close. They got two deaders out of that hole, you know."
"I figured there might be even more," Gary said.
"So did we. County guy in scuba gear says that's all, though. I'm glad it was him down there in that muck, not me."
They pulled into the fenced back lot behind Suite 200 and went up the rear stairway, Gary grinning and speaking to several of the staff, all of whom seemed to be responding to some kind of radar that told them he was on the floor again. Well, my little takedown is no secret from anybody, he thought with a twinge that was pure shame. Mac peeled off into his cubicle with a light back slap in parting, and Gary knocked on a wall panel to announce himself to the vest-covered, erect back of Paul Visconti.
If Visconti was still angry over Gary's suspicions, he hid it well. "I feel due for a caffeine fix," he said, rummaging in a drawer, tossing a packet of powdered cocoa mix onto his desk. "Peace offering, Landis; I know you're a chocaholic." Gary smiled at him and as they moved around seeking spoons, hot water, sugar substitute, he made a mental note: to reduce tensions, spend a few moments doing something simple and familiar together. At UCLA they would call it displacement behavior. Visconti would call it good supervision.
When they were seated and sipping behind a closed door, Visconti uncovered a manila folder full of printouts with jotted marginal notes and, inevitably, forbidden doodles. "You can work up a real two-oh-two as backup for what you sent me," said Visconti. "But first: you ready for light duty?"
Gary said he wasn't sure and displayed his cast, claiming he'd done it himself - a half-truth at worst, and one nobody would doubt after seeing it. He wanted a physician's opinion, maybe a better cast as well, he said. His account of his odyssey of the past week was brief, mentioning an old friend from college days who had put him up without knowing exactly why - as phrased, not quite a lie though he intended to leave the impression that "down south" meant Los Angeles.
