Blow Fly

112

MARINO TURNS INTO THE LOUISIANA AIR parking lot and stops cop-style, drivers window to driver's window, with Lucy's SUV.

"Good man. You got rid of the truck," Lucy commends him without saying hello. "Don't need a monster-garage truck with Virginia plates around here."

"Hey. I'm not stupid. Even if this is a piece of shit."

His rental truck is a six-cylinder Toyota. It doesn't even have mud flaps.

"Where'd you ditch it?" Lucy asks.

"The regular airport, long-term parking. Hope nobody breaks in to it. Everything I owns in there. Even if it ain't much."

"Lets go."

They park, but not near each other.

"Where's your boyfriend?" Marino asks as they walk toward the FBO.

"Prowling. Seeing if he can find Rocco s place in Spanish Town, the historic district where Rocco kept a place."

She stops briefly at the desk. "The Bell four-oh-seven," she says, not giving the tail number.

It isn't necessary. Her helicopter is the only one on the tarmac at the moment. The woman at the desk pushes a button that unlocks the door. A Gulf Stream is starting its engines, the roar painfully loud, and Lucy and Marino cover their ears, making sure they don't walk around the back of the plane and get blasted with exhaust, a good way to smell like jet fuel, which is sure to give one a headache when confined to a small cockpit. They hurry to the helipad, which is at the outer edge of the tarmac, far away from planes, because people ignorant of helicopters assume their rotor wash will kick up rocks and sand and scour the paint right off fixed-wing aircraft.

Marino is ignorant of helicopters and doesn't like them. He can barely force his massive body into the left seat, which doesn't adjust. He can't slide it back.

"Goddamn son of a bitch," is all he says, loosening his harness as far as it will go.

Lucy has already done her usual thorough prefiight, checks breakers and switches and throttle one last time and turns on the battery. She waits for automatic checks to go through their routines and she goes through hers, flipping on the generator. Headset on, she eases the throttle up to 100 RPMs. This is a time when the GPS will be of no value, nor will any other navigational instruments. A flight chart isn't going to be of much use, either, so she spreads open a Baton Rouge map on her lap and runs her finger southeast, along Route 408, also known as Hooper Road.

"Where we're going is off the map," she says into her mike. "Lake Maurepas. We keep going in this direction, towards New Orleans, and hopefully don't end up at Lake Pontchartrain. We're not going that far, but if we do, we've overflown Lake Maurepas, and Blind River and Dutch Bayou. I don't think that will happen."

"Fly fast," Marino says. "I hate helicopters, including yours."

"On the go," she announces and stabilizes into a hover, taking off into the wind.