Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  Am I afraid? he thought. He smiled to himself in the dark. Damn straight I’m scared. I’m about to kill myself.

  “Ben, Israel is depending on you.”

  “Don’t worry, Abram. I won’t back out. I made my decision. We all made a decision. It’s the right decision. I know that. Fight evil. Do right. If not now, when. Use it or lose it. Shit. A stitch in time saves nine. I know.”

  The glider club’s website said it began tow operations at ten in the morning. They would arrive well before then. They found an all-night truck stop at which they could pull between large semitrailers. They had three hours to spend there and did not want their unusual trailer, with the airplane’s tail jutting up at the rear, to attract attention.

  The truck stop neon flashed Breakfast All Day Always Open.

  Goldhersh was surprised that Shapiro ate only two slices of rye toast. No butter. He looked at the lawyer quizzically as the waitress walked away after taking their orders.

  “Not to make light of it, but that isn’t much of a last meal,” the huge man said.

  “Can’t eat before flying,” Shapiro replied. “You know on an airliner when the pilot comes on and warns that things could get bumpy? That’s the kind of turbulence gliders need to stay in the air. It gets awfully bouncy in my little airplane.”

  He saw the skeptical expression on the other man’s face.

  “Abram, I’m not getting cold feet.”

  Goldhersh didn’t answer.

  Shapiro finished his toast and two cups of coffee. Goldhersh called the waitress over every half hour to order more food for himself, and more coffee, to justify their three-hour sojourn in the vinyl booth.

  Finally, Shapiro looked at his watch and gestured for the waitress. She totaled the bill and dropped it on the table.

  “Sure you boys don’t want to wait around for lunch, now?” she said with a grin.

  Goldhersh reached for the check, only to have Shapiro drop two twenty-dollar bills on the table.

  “My treat,” he said with a smile. “I’ve always been such a cheapskate of a tipper. Last chance to make it up.”

  He tossed another twenty on the table and stood.

  In ten miles they reached a neatly painted white sign that said Mid-Maryland Soaring Society. The airfield was a wide grass strip with a sheet-metal hanger next to a small wood building. A high-winged single engine airplane, a tail-dragger with two wheels under the wings and a small wheel resting under the tail, the towplane, sat next to the building.

  They drove down the dirt road and parked next to a sign saying Visiting Pilots Welcome Aboard.

  CHAPTER 67

  Judy Katz ran up the stairs to her third-floor apartment, searching through her bag for her keys. The backpack she’d borrowed from Reuben was heavy. She was breathing hard by the time she reached her door.

  Some clothes, not much, and my passport, she thought. Where the hell did I leave my passport?

  The passport from her teenage years, the one filled with stamps from an eight-week If-It’s-Tuesday-This-Must-Be-Belgium American Youth Hostels summer vacation, was long expired. Her rapid-fire legal career did not leave time for vacations. She’d obtained a new passport a few years back, though, after she and a boyfriend-of-the-moment talked about how much fun it would be to take off on a last-minute weekend to Paris. She’d realized her ability to be spontaneous would take advance planning, the first action being getting a current passport. The boyfriend went south before the two of them flew east. She was ashamed the passport was as pristine as the day she’d received it.

  Where did I hide that thing?

  She turned the key and slowly opened the door, half expecting a crowd of the FBI agents she used to direct, but the apartment was empty, as quiet and lonely as it had been when she fled to Maine after discovering the DVD in her laptop.

  She pulled clothes from drawers as if she were conducting a search, which, she realized, she was. Who knew what the weather was like where she was going. Warm, for sure. Hot? She didn’t know.

  All she knew for certain was that she had to leave, had to get out of the country, soon, today if possible. Before tomorrow for sure. Everything would change tomorrow.

  At the top of the heap in her junk drawer was a small blue booklet with the familiar seal of the United States on the cover—her passport.

  She grinned, grabbed it and raced across the room to her bed. The passport went into her pocketbook. The clothes, and the manila folder, were stuffed into a nylon suitcase. With a final glance around the room, she walked out the door and down the steps, taking them two at a time despite the weight of the suitcase in one hand and the heavy backpack over her other shoulder.

  Her car was parked halfway down the block. Shouldn’t use my own car, she thought. Call a cab? Shouldn’t use my cell phone.

  Fuck it. She raced to the car. Fumbling with her car keys, she unlocked the trunk and tossed her suitcase in. The backpack went on the passenger seat.

  Now where? Abram would know. Wish I could have asked him. Downtown. There’s a place downtown.

  She drove quickly, following the Boston traffic rule of “green light means go, yellow means go faster.” Passing Boston Common, she turned down a side street and pulled to the curb next to a Loading Zone No Parking sign. “Screw it,” she said.

  Locking the car, leaving the suitcase behind, she hefted the backpack over one shoulder and walked to the corner. Washington Street. Where the hell is that building. Left? Right? She looked both ways to orient herself. Left. Maybe.

  She walked down the crowded sidewalk, so distracted she couldn’t deal with people walking toward her, doing a dance with a man in a blue suit, carrying a briefcase, cell phone to his ear, walking directly toward her. She moved right, he moved the same way, she moved left, he moved the same way. They smiled at one another in embarrassed annoyance and passed.

  Her eyes were on the old brick buildings lining the street. Which one is it? A doorway with a sign over the top brought her a sigh of relief. Boston Jewelers Building.

  She’d been there once before, a Friday afternoon she’d left work early after turning down an invitation to join “the guys” at a bar in Southie to tie one on. She went to look at rings, hoping, fantasizing that one day she’d be engaged. Where is my life going, she’d thought, wallowing in self-pity at approaching what she considered to be middle age with no husband, no family, no prospects of a husband or family. Nana was so right, she’d thought.

  Katz took the elevator to the third floor. She didn’t remember the name of the shop, but she did recall the sign on the front door. Beneath the word Diamonds it said, Gold Bought and Sold.

  She tried the door handle. Locked. Looking through the glass door she saw a man behind the counter. He looked up as she pressed the button next to the door handle. She smiled. He smiled and nodded. A buzz. She turned the handle and the door opened.

  “Ready for that diamond now, sweetie?” the man asked. Seeing the startled look on her face, he smiled broadly. “My father taught me. Never forget a customer. Especially such a pretty one. If this man doesn’t work out for you, there’ll be another. I knew it all along. So, sheyna velle, bright eyes, are you ready for your diamond?”

  Katz lifted her backpack onto the glass counter, plunking it down with such a thunk she was afraid she’d break the glass. The man raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  She reached to the bottom of the bag with both hands and deposited a mound of glistening gold coins on the glass.

  “I want to sell these,” she said, hiding, hopefully, the nervousness in her voice.

  The man picked one coin up and glanced at it quickly.

  “Krugerrands,” he said, spitting the word out as if it were an obscenity.

  “I want cash for these. How much are they worth?” Katz asked.

  Without saying a word, the man began counting the coins, sliding them one at a time across the counter as he did so. “Ten, eleven, twelve.”

  “I have more,” Katz said quie
tly. “But I’m going to take some with me. How much can I get for these?”

  The man walked to the far end of the counter where a computer that looked as if it had been purchased during the Eisenhower administration sat, orange characters appearing on a black screen. He pecked at the keys with one extended figure. Rows of numbers filled the screen.

  He walked back to Katz with a look of sadness, almost of despondency.

  “Gold is down,” he said. “Keep them. Sell them some other time.” He saw the shocked expression on her face.

  “You know I’ll just take them someplace else,” she said, desperate. “I need the money today, right now.”

  “No, tottala, no,” he said softly. “Whatever is troubling you, it will get better. Trust me. I’ve seen bad in my life. It gets better.”

  He saw the desperation in her eyes. He made a decision.

  “So, sometimes getting better takes some help. All right then. They have a face value of $1,346. I’ll give you . . .” He paused, his eyes turned to the ceiling, going distant for a moment, then returning. “I’ll give you $1,200 each. Nobody else will give that much. They’d steal them from you, the gonifs, thieves.”

  “I’ll take it,” Katz blurted. “Thank you so much, so much.” She pushed the coins toward the man. “Can I have large bills, please?”

  “Oh no, sweetie. I don’t keep that kind of cash here. They’d beat me over the head.”

  He opened a drawer and removed a large leather binder. Inside was a spiral-bound check register.

  “I have to have cash,” she said flatly, sadly.

  The man calculated rapidly in his head and began writing a check.

  “You can take this across the street.” He pointed out the window. A sign said Bank of America. “They’ll give you cash for this. I need your name, dear.”

  “Judith Katz.”

  “Katz?” He smiled. “A Katz. Not related to Hyman and Myrna are you? No. Of course not. They had no children.” He signed the check as carefully as if he were stitching a wound. He waved it in the air to dry the ink, then handed the check to Katz.

  “Things will get better. Trust me.”

  She looked at the man kindly, sighed deeply, relieved by the prospect of completing the first step of her mission.

  “But first,” she said, “first it is going to get much, much worse.”

  She left the building with the check clutched in her hand, afraid that if it went into her bag, some thief’s radar would be alerted and the bag would be snatched.

  Across the street, the bank teller looked at the check Judith handed him, then at the driver’s license presented with it, punched keys on a keyboard, looked at a screen and asked, with no hint that anything unusual was taking place, “How would you like this?”

  Katz walked two blocks to the American Express travel office next to her dry cleaner. The office was empty except for two bored-looking employees sitting at separate desks.

  “I want to book a flight,” Katz said.

  The travel agent looked more like a bicycle messenger, both of her earlobes riddled with rings, both nostrils pierced, as was one eyebrow.

  When she spoke, a glint of gold showed in the middle of her tongue.

  She looked surprised. No one Katz’s age used travel agents. Most customers looked more like the travel agent’s grandparents, and even her grandmother booked her flights back and forth from Florida on Travelocity.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” the woman said cheerily. “Vacation? Got some good packages in the islands.”

  “Africa,” Katz said, no hint of excitement in her voice at uttering such an exotic destination. “I want to go to Africa, Eastern Africa.”

  She saw the surprise on the agent’s face.

  “Is there a flight today?”

  CHAPTER 68

  Goldhersh waited outside while Shapiro went into the small metal building declaring itself to be Office Mid-Maryland Soaring Society. Inside were a counter and a coffee table with three ratty rattan chairs. Dog-eared copies of the Soaring Society of America journal covered the table. A large erasable calendar hung on the wall behind the counter.

  A large-boned woman wearing age-faded jeans walked through a door at the side of the counter. A black plastic tag pinned over her left shirt pocket said TAMMY.

  “Howdy,” Shapiro said, hoping to hide his relief. “I just drove down from Massachusetts. I thought I’d get in some ridge flying.” He was met with a blank stare. “I called a few days ago,” he added.

  “I remember,” she replied. “Looks like a sunny day? Whatcha flyin’?” The woman looked out at the Pathfinder and trailer.

  “A Grob 103, two place. I thought I’d fly the ridge today. I’d like to get up this morning, if possible.”

  “Said that already.”

  “So, how do I make arrangements? Is the tow pilot around? I’d like to speak with him and see about getting a nice high tow, five thousand feet or so. Give me a chance to familiarize myself with the area.”

  The woman gave Shapiro a blank stare.

  “Is the tow pilot here?”

  The woman walked around the counter to stand next to Shapiro.

  “You’re looking at him?” she said. “Why don’t you get that fancy plane stuck together and we’ll talk about that tow?”

  As Shapiro turned to leave, the woman spoke again.

  “One thing. Gotta see your pilot’s license. New reg. FAA says so?”

  I never heard of that regulation, Shapiro thought suspiciously. “Sure thing,” he said. “It’s in the car. I’ll show it to you when the plane’s assembled.”

  “No prob. Don’t forget. New reg.”

  Shapiro said nothing to Goldhersh about any suspicions. He backed the glider trailer onto the grass in front of the club building. The cover slid easily off the trailer, revealing the long white fuselage of the glider, the vertical tail rising at one end, the bulge of the cockpit at the front reminding Shapiro, as usual, of the time a waitress near a glider contest asked him if he flew one of “them flyin’sperm things.” The cockpit was topped with a long Plexiglas cover, hinged at one side. The plane’s wings were stored on edge along both sides of the body.

  The two men lifted the wings and laid them on the grass. They slid the airplane backwards from the trailer, rolling on the single rubber wheel protruding from underneath the cockpit.

  With Goldhersh holding the end, Shapiro carefully guided a wing into the narrow opening on the side of the fuselage. A long steel bar at the inner end of the wing slipped into a slot behind the rear seat. They did the same with the other wing.

  Shapiro opened the clear canopy and leaned into the far rear of the cockpit, where the ends of the wings were visible. He inserted steel safety pins into holes in the wing ends, then spun locking nuts over the pins, finally inserting cotter pins into holes in the pins to ensure the nuts could not loosen.

  He counted the threads exposed on the pins above the nuts.

  Standard procedure.

  All that remained was to carry the horizontal tail section to the rear of the plane and lower it over the flat top of the vertical tail. Locking pins held it in place.

  The plane was ready. It had taken only fifteen minutes.

  Before returning to the club building, Shapiro conducted his preflight inspection, walking slowly around the airplane, testing the flight controls to ensure that the wing flaps responded to movement of the control stick in the cockpit and that the tail surfaces moved in the correct directions.

  Finally, he walked to one wing tip, the wing that jutted into the air while the other wing rested on the grass. He reached up for the wing tip above his head and shook it. Hard. The flexible wing moved in a wave from the tip to the body. He walked to the other wing tip, lifted it and shook it.

  Satisfied that the plane was flight ready, he called to Goldhersh, who stood watching this ritual silently. Shapiro glanced at the large man from time to time and noticed his lips continuing to move soundlessly, without st
op, as his prayers continued.

  Can’t hurt, Shapiro thought.

  The familiar routine of attaching the wings and tail surface and conducting the preflight inspection settled Shapiro’s thoughts. Over the years little could distract him from absolute attention to the details of those rituals; the counting of the threads was as close to a sacrament as Shapiro believed in.

  The final step in the preflight brought him back to reality. Rather than buckling the rear safety belts around the cockpit cushions, Shapiro was confronted with the steel cylinder, still wrapped in blue vinyl dental blankets.

  He called to Goldhersh.

  “Abram, let’s put these things in the car.” He lifted one of the heavy blankets and staggered as he carried the armload of blue blankets to the SUV. He dropped them on the grass behind the tailgate, lifted it, and placed each of the blankets in the rear of the car.

  Shapiro noticed Tammy standing at the window. Her eyes were on the large man at the rear of the SUV.

  The door opened and the woman came out. She glanced at his airplane and nodded.

  “You said five thousand feet?” she asked.

  “That’s right. Like to have some time to get situated before hitting the ridge,” Shapiro said. That was an exceptionally high tow, twice as high as was necessary to get to the nearby ridgeline. “Can we get started soon?”

  “Want me to tell ya ’bout the landin’pattern before ya take off, or ya gonna wait till yer on the way down?” she asked.

  “Woops, sorry,” Shapiro said, trying to conceal his nervousness. “Run me through it.”

  The woman described the flight pattern at the field, pointing to the wind sock hanging from the hanger roof, telling Shapiro where the interception point, the beginning of the landing pattern, was located. The familiar right-turn-right-turn landing pattern.