The Long Fall

DISTRACTED AS I WAS by the security search I didn’t worry about the plane until they walked us out on the tarmac and I had to duck my head to enter the cabin. My seat was a single on the left side of the aisle and my butt was wider than the armrests designed to contain it. The arcing wall felt like it was closing in and there seemed to be too many people in the small compartment. I counted seventeen.

There were propellers on the wings.

The pilot slid the plastic partition open and turned his handsome gray head to address us.

“It’s a short flight today, folks,” he said. “I’m going to have Marie, your flight attendant, strap herself in because it’s gonna be choppy for a hundred and seven out of the eighty-two minutes we’ll be in the air.”

The stew, a forty-something bottle blonde with a penchant for exercise but not for dinner, smiled at us in a nauseated sort of way. I reached to undo the buckle of my seat belt but Marie closed the hatchlike door and folded her seat down. As she attached her safety belt, crossing her heart with thick nylon straps, I took in a deep breath and forgot how to let it out. I was no longer concerned with Frank Tork or Roger Brown, Ambrose Thurman or Tony the Suit. While the plane was taxiing out toward the runway I forgot about my conviction that Death would not come at me from someplace I expected.

I closed my eyes and sought a place of calm in my soul. I found it for a moment telling myself that it couldn’t be so bad, that this flight was a commonplace event that passed without incident thousands of times around the world every day.

I was wrong.

There was nothing ordinary about that flight. From the moment we took off the airship was buffeted like a dead leaf in white water. My head struck the window and only the seat belt prevented me from bouncing across the cabin. I kept my eyes closed but that wasn’t much help. The plane veered left and then suddenly went right. I knew that couldn’t have been the pilot’s intention. We bounced and shook for what seemed like a very long time, but when I peeked at my watch I saw that we were only nine minutes into the flight.

I looked around the cabin, expecting to see terror in the eyes of the other passengers. I was wrong there, too. Two ladies were having what seemed like a pleasant conversation. One guy was reading his newspaper, and the man next to him was sleeping.

The world outside my window was the same blue of the sky in my dream. For some reason the memory of the nightmare partially negated the terror of the flight.

At some point I was further distracted from my fear when an errant thought entered my mind. I remembere sd. ifyd that I didn’t even know what Roger Brown looked like. I had maybe doomed a man without ever seeing his face.

The flight banged on like an old truck without shock absorbers making its way down a rutted country road. But the tumult and roar receded in my mind. I’d never been in the armed forces, but I had been through a war or two. This ride, I came to feel, was little more than one of my cold showers, a prelude to a weeklong day of adversities. I grinned at the fear roiling inside me. I didn’t owe it anything but my company.

Ê€„

14

As soon as I got off the plane my hands began to tremble. The fear that I’d held down blossomed, forcing me to walk slowly so as not to stumble. It was a small airport with a magazine rack and a hot dog stand but it felt like nirvana to me.

Zephyra had reserved a car at the best rental service. Somehow she had pooled the various credit-card air miles and rent-a-car points of all her clients so that we usually got good deals on flights, rentals, and even some hotels.

A pleasant young man with pimples and big teeth gave me a map and the keys to a downsized red SUV. I sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, studying the city streets. I’d been to Albany many times before because that’s the state capital and a large percentage of your politicians are crooks. I’d done cover-ups and smears across the board up there but I didn’t know the city the way I knew New York, so I took the time to refamiliarize myself with the general lay of the town.

The car radio was playing “Smooth Operator” by Sade when I turned my attention from map to match-book. It was a wonder to me that with all the searching by security experts they couldn’t come up with a book of matches. Luck, more than anything else, is what saved you up in the air.

Oddfellows Pub, the matchbook’s advertiser, was on the north side of town. It seemed like a straightforward deal: I’d go to the bar, flash Ambrose’s card along with a story, and they would have some memory, allowing me to get that much closer to this pretender’s throat. But there again I was mistaken.