Detour

FORTY-FOUR

They were on their way to the zoo.

Paul was riding in the bird-watcher’s Jeep, just the two of them.

After Paul had hung up on Pablo, he’d needed to make one more call.

The bird-watcher had given him a number if Paul needed to reach him.

Twenty minutes later he showed up at Paul’s apartment—I was in the neighborhood, he said.

Paul told him about the Bronx hospital. About Miles’ little sentencing trick from his days in juvenile court. About finally standing face-to-face with Manuel Riojas’ lost little girl.

The bird-watcher was suitably impressed.

“You want an honorary badge? We give them out to schoolkids who take the official DEA tour in Washington. You can be my real make-believe deputy.”

Paul declined. He was up to the hard part, what he needed the bird-watcher to agree to.

The exchange.

“Whoa, I don’t know about that, Paul. You didn’t mention anything about a trade. Last time I looked, that wasn’t part of my job description.”

“My wife’s an American citizen. You promised you’d help get them out. Here’s their chance. Here’s how. Miles must’ve gotten Riojas’ daughter into the country illegally. Isn’t that normal U.S. protocol—sending illegals back where they came from?”

“After suitable bureaucratic bullshit, which you cannot begin to believe. I imagine you’re talking just a little bit faster here. And the girl might—and I reiterate might—be valuable to us. Wasn’t that the nature of your enticement, Paul? The carrot you so artfully dangled in front of us?”

“She’s not going to disappear. You can make whatever arrangements you want after you send her back. Put her someplace you can see her—stick her in another hospital. I don’t care.”

He was lying, of course.

He did care.

Spending ten minutes with her in that awful place had made him care. If he could effect the trade, he’d be helping three people.

“I don’t know, Paul. You’re asking me to go outside normal channels. To put my cowboy hat on. I’d have to think about that one. By the way, did the weeping widow mention anything about illicit money? Assuming Miles didn’t blow it all on the Cleveland Cavs? There’s nothing the DEA likes better than bags and bags of ill-gotten gains. It’s how we keep score.”

“No,” Paul said. “She didn’t have a clue about any of this.”

“Okay, fair enough. You’ve done a bang-up job, Paul. First-rate. At some point we’ll have to do a full body search on his bank accounts. As far as your trade scenario, I’ll have to get back to you on that one. I admit I’m kind of leaning toward helping you. I mean, fuck those little Marxists, right? They won’t be very happy when Pablo kidnaps their hostages. It puts a smile on my face just thinking about it.”

This was two days ago.

One day later the bird-watcher called him with the good news.

He’d done some thinking, run it up and down the flagpole a few times.

He’d made a few calls to overseas assets.

He’d wangled the necessary papers.

In the end he’d put his Stetson on.

The plan. The girl would be taken to a debriefing house in Glen Cove, Long Island. How much she knew was probably negligible, but it was worth the effort to find out, and worth seeing what Riojas might do when he found out they had her. They’d make sure he knew. Maybe he’d send someone to try and get her. It’s possible. They’d keep the girl there long enough to find out. To make sure Paul’s wife and daughter got on a plane. To flush Riojas’ men out of the weeds. Then, if all went according to plan, they’d reciprocate.

Paul, honorary DEA deputy and faux insurance agent of the late Miles Goldstein, would accompany the bird-watcher to Mount Ararat Hospital.

Plan on.

THEY WERE CURRENTLY ZOOMING OVER THE 138TH STREET BRIDGE. Well, not zooming, moving in fits and starts, due to construction in the left lane.

Clouds were gathering over the East River. It was late morning, hot and humid.

“Looks like rain,” Paul said.

“Thank you, Uncle Weatherbee,” the bird-watcher said.

Paul realized he still didn’t know the bird-watcher’s name. When he’d asked him, the bird-watcher said he preferred to remain an international man of mystery, then asked Paul if he’d preferred Austin Powers 1 or 2.

Yankee Stadium was looming off to the left, its graceful arches bone white against the blackening clouds. Twins vs. Yanks 7:30 tonight.

When they got to the end of the bridge, they veered left.

“Not exactly prime real estate, is it?” the bird-watcher said. “If I put my jacket on and yelled DEA, half the neighborhood would start running.”

The bird-watcher pointed out a restaurant—best chorizo in New York. He nodded at a kid in retro basketball shorts, nervously bopping up and down on a graffiti-scarred street corner. Ten to one he’s pulling guard duty for a skank house.

Now they were headed up Hunters Point Boulevard.

“Ever been to the Bronx Zoo?” the bird-watcher asked.

He seemed relaxed and chatty today, as if Paul were his partner riding shotgun on a case, instead of an insurance actuary who’d taken an unfortunate detour.

“When I was a kid.”

For some reason Paul had never visited the zoo as an adult.

He knew the reason.

You go to zoos when you’re a kid.

Or when you have kids.

THE HOSPITAL SEEMED MORE OPPRESSIVE TODAY.

It might’ve been purely physical—the air-conditioning was on the blink, someone said—but Paul thought it had more to do with just being there again. Seeing it a second time let him appreciate the full awfulness of the surroundings, what it must’ve been like for Julius to stare at these salmon-pink walls for three years.

What it was like for Ruth he could only imagine.

Now she’d be leaving it behind.

He felt as if he were at the end of a marathon. Exhausted, yes, but with an exuberance that felt like hope.

After the bird-watcher had presented his credentials, they were ushered into a wood-paneled office, where the hospital administrator offered them seats. The bird-watcher had called ahead. He’d pulled strings, twisted arms, pulled rank, produced papers, done whatever a high-level DEA agent does to get what he wants. Mostly, he’d played the national security card—which, like AmEx platinum, seemed capable of opening all doors and rebuffing all dissent.

The administrator seemed glad to see them, as if he were in the company of minor celebrities. At least one minor celebrity.

“I don’t suppose you can tell me any details?” the man asked the bird-watcher in a tone of voice that suggested he was more than capable of keeping national secrets.

The bird-watcher declined.

“Let’s just say if it wasn’t crucially important, I wouldn’t be here,” he said.

The man—Theodore Hill, the degree on the wall said—nodded knowingly.

“I assume you have doctors waiting wherever this place is you’re taking her,” Theodore said.

“Of course,” the bird-watcher replied.

“Her meds are listed in her file. Lithium mostly. She’s not much trouble.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Up to this point, Paul Breidbart, insurance agent, had remained silent. But curiosity got the better of him—that, and the assumption that what an insurance agent wasn’t privy to, a DEA agent was.

“What happened to her?” Paul asked. “Back in Colombia?”

The bird-watcher turned to look at him with an expression of mild disapproval. Asking questions wasn’t his job today. Before the bird-watcher could interrupt, plead time constraints, or simply stand up, the administrator spilled some details.

“I wasn’t here when the girl was admitted. Different administration. Naturally, I looked at her file when you contacted me. According to her adoptive father, she witnessed the torture and murder of her mother. Was apparently made to witness it. It went on for several days. Some kind of drug lord’s idea of retribution—it’s quite a country down there, isn’t it? I imagine we’re talking about a true sociopath with strong sadistic impulses. As you might assume, being forced to watch something like that would have an unhealthy effect on a three-year-old. She evidently became too much for her father to handle.”

Yes, Miles had given it all of one day, Paul thought.

“Well”—the bird-watcher looked at his watch—“we have to get this show on the road.”

“Of course,” Theodore said, a man glad to be of service to his country. “They’re bringing her down.”

Paul had one more question.

“Does she know her adoptive father passed away?”

“Yes. According to Dr. Sanji—have you met our Dr. Sanji?”

Paul nodded.

“She said Ruth weathered the storm quite nicely. He was pretty much a father in name only. On the other hand, he was all she had.”

No, Paul thought. She had a grandfather who’d cried for her. A grandmother who’d entered a pact with the devil in order to save her.

“What’s she been told?” the bird-watcher asked. “About where she’s going?”

“Per your instructions, she was told she’s going somewhere for treatment. Not permanently, just for a little while.”

The bird-watcher nodded. “Good.”

IT SEEMED LIKE HER EYES WERE OPENED WIDER TODAY.

Maybe she was taking it all in. The surrounding world. Burned-out buildings and potholed highways, looming bridges with pigeon-covered underpasses, roving bands of restless kids trolling the mostly mean streets. Paul wondered how many times she’d been taken outside the hospital—if they still conducted retard patrols across the street where they fed the llamas and threw peanuts to the elephants.

They’d made it out of the Bronx and were this moment coming off the ramp of the Throgs Neck Bridge. When Paul was a kid, he’d wondered what a frog’s neck looked like.

Ruth remained mostly silent. Every so often she’d utter something that might’ve come from the pages of Little Women or a 1930s comedy.

“Ezooks,” she exclaimed when they passed a particularly huge man lolling against a stripped car, “get a load of that gorilla.”

Her first sight of the Throgs Neck Bridge elicited a chorus of goshes and gee whillikerses.

Occasionally, the bird-watcher peered in his rearview mirror in an effort to see whether she was really saying what it sounded like she was.

Even with the looming rain, Long Island Sound was dotted with sails today.

“Quite a flotilla,” Ruth said.

The bird-watcher pulled a cigarette from his pocket.

“Think she’ll mind?” he asked Paul.

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Darling,” the bird-watcher said, “would it trouble you greatly if I partook of some nicotine?”

Ruth stared at him.

“A smoke? A cancer stick?” he said.

“Cancer is the second leading killer in the United States,” Ruth answered, sounding like an actuary in good standing.

“You don’t say,” the bird-watcher replied. “Well, I’ll certainly keep that in mind.”

The bird-watcher lit up, sucked in a generous amount of cancer-causing nicotine, then blew it out, where it drifted to the backseat, causing Ruth to sputter and cough.

“Whoops,” he said, “maybe I ought to crack open a window in deference to our friend.”

“I don’t particularly like cigarette smoke myself,” Paul said.

“Yeah,” the bird-watcher said, “me either.”

He opened the driver’s side window, letting in pure humidity and the sound of a mufflerless beer truck to their left. It sounded like an entire pack of Hell’s Angels.

“Lovely,” the bird-watcher said.

“No, it’s not,” Ruth volunteered, obviously unfamiliar with sarcasm. “It’s raucous and revolting.”

“You’re right,” the bird-watcher said. “My bad.” He turned on the CD player. “This ought to help.”

Latin music.

It sounded vaguely familiar.

Paul closed his eyes. Was that what was playing in Pablo’s car on the way to Santa Regina? His heart had been beating so fast it hurt. About to meet the daughter it had taken eighteen hours and five years to find. He was already forgetting her face, he realized with a pang. How long had he really had with her—a blip in time—and yet they’d forged a connection strong enough to still tug at his emotions, to pull them clear across time and space.

He was a father, he guessed. That’s all.

They were headed east on the Long Island Expressway. Which was decidedly better than heading west on the LIE, since that side of the highway was staying true to its moniker as the world’s longest parking lot.

They were close, he thought. About to close the circle again.

He wasn’t absolutely sure when it hit him.

But hit was the right word.

A realization that came with the force of a punch to the solar plexus. It staggered him.

The music.

It wasn’t the music playing on Pablo’s radio.

He’d heard this music somewhere else.

Suddenly, he was back on his stomach in a field full of cattails and screams. Trying not to listen as a human being was tortured to death just fifty yards from him. Hearing every excruciating whimper as they cut off his body parts one by one.

You could almost hear the sound of knife hitting bone. Even with that music blaring. Even with that pounding rhythm and screeching horns.

Even then.

Celia Cruz. Queen of Samba.

Mi mami, one of the men yelled. A fucking scream.

That’s what the bird-watcher was playing on his car radio. Only it wasn’t a car radio. It was a Jeep radio. A green Jeep.

Two green Jeeps had come flying out of the cattails that day.

Paul’s eyes were wide-open. They must have matched Ruth’s.

He looked at the bird-watcher sitting beside him. A bulge on the left side of his shirt. Assume shoulder holster complete with loaded gun.

The bird-watcher was still contentedly puffing away, considerate enough to exhale through the crack in the window. He was humming along to the late Queen of Samba, keeping one eye on the road.

At some point that eye wandered. He noticed Paul noticing him.

Or maybe it just took him a few minutes to suddenly realize he’d screwed up.

“Shit. That was kind of Homer Simpson of me.”

Paul felt familiar tentacles of fear wrap themselves around his newborn hope. And strangle it.

“Oh well,” he said. “You were going to know eventually. Although I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be while doing eighty on the LIE. It kind of forces me to multitask. Not that I’m not up to the challenge.” He stubbed his cigarette out with his right hand.

Freeing it for other things.

“Okay. Let’s get the lay of the land here. I have a gub.”

Paul was frozen to the seat.

“Come on, you saw the Woody Allen movie—Take the Money and Run? The bank heist—the note he passes to the teller? I have a gub. Work with me, Paul. I’m trying to protect our friend back there from needless anxiety. We can talk pig latin if you’d like. No? Okay, what the heck. We’ll talk turkey.”

Paul remained mute. He’d already been deaf and dumb far too long.

“You’d probably like an explanation. Okay. It’ll pass the time. Where in the world do I start? Oh yeah. Colombia. I can bore you with my trials and tribulations as a DEA agent in good standing. As our man in Bogotá. I can chart for you the moment I went from gung-ho to who-are-we-kidding? The moment when I realized it was all a charade, politics, Vietnam with a different jungle. I could bore you with all that claptrap, but it would be like the whining of a child. So let’s talk like adults.”

He looked into the rearview mirror.

“You okay back there, sweetheart?”

“I’m marvelously comfortable, thank you.”

“Marvelously comfortable. Glad to hear it. Not too much longer to go. I’m so used to kids asking are we there yet?” He glanced back at Paul. “Beretta. Bore-tip bullets. In case you’re wondering.”

“Where are we going?”

“Metaphorically, to hell in a handbasket. Speaking of we as a nation, of course. I understand your concerns are more personal. We’ll get to that. Do you know what a DEA agent makes, Paul? No? Let’s put it this way—when Bush so generously decided to let the rich get richer and the deficit get larger, he wasn’t doing me any favors.”

A police car was cruising up to them in the right lane.

The bird-watcher closed the two inches of open window. Cranked the music louder.

“Remember, Paul. I’m an official agent of the U.S. government and you’re someone facing federal drug charges, not to mention indictment on several newly minted antiterrorist statutes. Your only ally in this car is a mental case. Sorry, darling. Just calling a spade a spade. To be blunt, Paul, I can shoot you on the spot and get a couple of pats on the back from Nassau’s finest. Understand?”

“Yes,” Paul said. The police car was almost parallel with them. A female officer glanced out the window at them. The bird-watcher had placed some kind of badge on the dashboard. The officer smiled, nodded, turned back around.

“Wonderful, well done. Still comfortable back there, darling?”

Ruth didn’t answer.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Oddly enough, I never actually ran into Mr. Riojas in Bogotá,” he said. “Not until our government decided in its infinite wisdom to have him exported to U.S. federal prison. Sometimes we need to show everyone how swimmingly the war on drugs is going. We need someone’s head on a platter. He has a very big head. The fact is, he outlasted his usefulness, like Noriega. Back in the days when all we cared about were the little lefties in the hills, Mr. Riojas was very useful. He was like one of those Colombian vampire bats—ugly as hell and God forbid one should ever show up in your attic, but boy do they do a number on the mosquito population. They perform a useful function. Until they don’t. Someone decided Riojas had become a liability. We paid off who we needed to, and one day I get the call. Mr. Riojas is coming home for trial. And who do you think gets picked to escort the notorious fugitive to justice?”

The bird-watcher reached forward, readjusted the radio. “She’s got a voice on her, all right, but frankly, it’s hurting my ears. How are yours?”

“Working fine,” Paul said. He’d begun tumbling numbers in his head, numbers he summoned front and center for immediate review.

Accident ratios for a typical SUV.

“Great. Still good back there, sweetheart?” addressing himself to Ruth.

“The road sign said Commack,” Ruth said.

“Right you are. Commack. You’re my official navigator, okay?”

“I’m not entirely confident I’m up to the task,” Ruth replied.

“Oh, sure you are. Just keep looking at the signs and you’ll perform the task quite nicely. What a vocabulary,” he said to Paul.

“Where are we going?” Paul said. “What are you going to do with us?”

In a typical year 31,000 occupants of passenger vehicles are killed in traffic accidents.

“Would it kill you to let me finish the story? Where was I? Oh, right. On a plane home, with public enemy numero uno. By the way, we’re talking private jet—plenty of legroom and a shitload of cold Coronas. What we do for the really bad guys. It’s amazing what you start talking about in the back of a plane when you have nothing else to do. He’s not a terrible guy, really. A bit excessive on the violence thing, sure, but pretty much on a par with your typical Special Ops guy. Talk about sociopath with strong sadistic impulses. Those guys are brutal.”

“Riverhead,” Ruth said. “One mile.”

“That’s it, honey. Right again. You’re doing a fabulous job. In case you’re interested, Paul, I can get the Beretta out of my shoulder holster and into firing position in exactly 2.6 seconds. No lie. We hold tournaments when we start going wacky on surveillance. I’m the official DEA record-holder.”

Of all vehicular fatalities in any given year, sport-utility vehicles account for over 28 percent.

“I would say Mr. Riojas was a bit dejected on the ride home. He could see the handwriting on the prison wall. He was clearly preoccupied with loose ends. There was a piece of unfinished business that seemed particularly top of mind. He’d made a vow, which he’d yet to fulfill. Vows are kind of sacred to these fellows, especially when they make them to their Santeria gods. Apparently, even drug lords imbibe the opiate of the masses. Regardless, he’d made a vow and damned if he wasn’t going to see it through. You can guess what we’re talking about, can’t you, Paul?”

“Exit 70,” Ruth said.

“One more exit to go, people. Keep up the good work, Ruth.”

Most fatalities involving sport-utility vehicles are due to rollovers, of which SUVs have the highest rate among all vehicles, approximately 36 percent.

“It seems a certain ex-mistress of his had the temerity to leave him flat. Carrying his child too. What’s a fellow to do? It’s not like he didn’t tell her what was in store for her if she ever ran away. He’d spelled it out. He swore it on a stack of chicken heads. Still, off she went. It took him three years to find her. When he did, he went, okay, a little overboard. He took his time, used all his formidable skills. I’m not condoning that kind of brutality. But it’s kind of like charging a jungle animal with intolerable cruelty. It’s their survival instinct, how they get to stay king of the jungle. He related it to me in a most matter-of-fact voice. How he decided things. Who’d watch whom? Who first: mother or daughter? He picked mom. He admitted how surprised and delighted he was at how long she lasted. Only there was a fuckup. One of his executioners apparently had a crisis of conscience and went vamos with the kid. So now what? Riojas had only completed half the vow. He’s not the kind to give up. He kept looking for her. Got to the point where he was pretty sure she’d been smuggled to America. Which didn’t really discourage him. You know why he was telling me all this, Paul?”

Fifty-eight percent of SUV rollover crashes are caused by extreme turns.

“He sensed a man willing to listen. Not just to a story. To an offer. Think of me as Cortés hearing the first stories of Latin American gold. And what was he asking me to do, really? Not spring him—he was astute enough to realize that was out of the question. Simply to fulfill the promise of a doomed and shattered man. By the time we touched down in Miami, I’d agreed.”

Forty percent of SUV rollovers are caused by alcohol consumption.

“I went to work. It was the same work I’d always been doing. I just had a new paymaster. It’s amazing what happens when you follow the money. You never know where it’ll lead. In this case, to Miles Goldstein. And then you. You were kind enough to be my honorary deputy and help wrap it up for me. My signore salutes you. I’ve already cashed out. Just one thing left. Or two.”

“They tied her to something,” Ruth said.

“What?” The bird-watcher jerked his head around.

“My mother. They tied her to a pipe in the ceiling. They put me on a chair and ordered me to watch.”

Thirty-two percent of fatal SUV rollovers are caused by speeding.

“Now, sweetheart, we don’t need to be talking about that, do we? You’re my official navigator, correctomundo?”

“They burned her. She screamed and screamed. He showed me his knife—he made me touch it.” Her eyes were lost in time, Paul thought.

“Okay, I think that’s enough of that, don’t you? Just tell me when the exit comes, all right, sweetie?”

Twenty-two percent of fatal SUV rollovers are caused by driver inattention—e.g., changing radio stations.

“When she closed her eyes, they’d make her wake up again. They would start all over. I was in the chair. I saw it. They took her skin off.”

“Yes, you remember. I understand. No wonder Daddy dumped you in that bad place. Now, how about giving it a little rest?”

Ten percent of fatal SUV rollovers are caused by driver incompetence—e.g., pushing the wrong pedal.

“You’re falling down on the job, Ruth. Here’s the exit I’m looking for.”

The bird-watcher shifted into the exit lane, flicked on his right turn signal, began turning off.

“Seat belt on, Ruth?” Paul asked gently.

“Yes.”

Six percent of fatal SUV rollovers are caused by inadvertent action—e.g., lifting the emergency brake while the vehicle’s in drive.

“Good,” Paul said.

He pulled the transmission into reverse just as the Jeep went into the apex of its turn.

It took probably less than 2.6 seconds, because the bird-watcher was unable to get his Beretta loaded with snub-nosed bullets out of his shoulder holster. It likely wouldn’t have made a difference. The Jeep teetered violently to the left, partially righted itself, then went over.

Paul and Ruth were wearing their seat belts.

The bird-watcher wasn’t, as cowboys are wont to do.

Nearly two-thirds of passenger fatalities in SUV rollover crashes are unrestrained.

There was that moment when the Jeep hovered between air and ground, when Paul could see asphalt looming like a dark wave he hadn’t seen coming. Then it broke over him.

He heard glass shatter, a scream, the awful sound of shearing metal. He must’ve blacked out. When he came to, he was upside down and staring into a pool of blood. He was still in his seat, but the seat seemed half detached from the car, held there by a few flimsy screws.

Where was Ruth?

He turned his head around, half afraid he wouldn’t be able to, that he’d discover he was paralyzed and dying.

No. His head pivoted around just like God intended it to.

The entire backseat had disappeared.

He looked out the shattered window to his right.

There.

It was a surreal photo, something that belonged on the wall at MOMA. The backseat was sitting upright in the grass perfectly intact, and so was the person sitting on it. Intact, seemingly whole, and demonstrably alive. She looked as if she were simply waiting for a bus.

That accounted for two of them.

Where was the bird-watcher?

The entire windshield was blown out. Gone.

The interior of the upside-down Jeep was beginning to fill with thick, acrid smoke. Something else. The putrid odor of gasoline.

He unclasped the seat belt that was digging into his gut. He used his hands to feel his way through the window and out onto the pavement. He pushed himself out. Every inch of movement left a trail of blood.

His face. Something was wrong with his face. Numbness had given way to searing pain. When he touched his cheek, his hand came away bright red.

He stood up, somehow made it to his feet, both arms out for balance like a tightrope walker.

A body was lying about twenty feet from the totaled Jeep.

Paul stumbled toward it.

The bird-watcher.

He wasn’t moving. He was still as death.

And then he wasn’t.

He moved. One hand at first. Slowly feeling around as if looking for something. Then the other hand, Paul about five feet from him, caught between moving forward and moving back. The bird-watcher lifted himself up onto his palms—executing a kind of half push-up, gazing around like a man appearing out of a hole.

He saw Paul frozen to the spot.

The bird-watcher had been searching for something.

He’d found it.

He stood up—one leg, then the other—smiled through an ugly matting of blood and dirt. He pointed his gun at Paul.

“Remember Rock-’em ’Sock-em Robots, Paul?” Something was off with his speech—he seemed to be missing part of his tongue. “Had two as a kid. You could knock their blocks off, right off their bodies, but it didn’t matter, they kept coming.”

He took a few steps forward, gun still pointing at him.

Ruth began crying. When he gazed back at her, she seemed caught up in a shower of green leaves.

Paul turned back to face his fate—one way or another it was going to end here.

The bird-watcher was still stumbling, unsteady, oddly loose-limbed, but inexorably boring in.

“That was some trick you pulled.” He was having problems with his t’s. Ha was some rick you pulled. “Learn that in actuary school?”

No. In actuary school you learned the difference between risk and probability. You learned that not wearing a seat belt during a rollover should kill you. Should, but not always. But you learned something else about life and its opposite number, something of a mantra around the halls of an insurance company.

If one thing doesn’t get you, the other thing will.

A Dodge Coronado had come hurtling off the LIE onto the exit ramp. Safety rules recommend a slowing down of at least 50 percent while turning into a highway exit. The driver of the Coronado must’ve missed that class.

When confronted with the smashed and smoking Jeep sitting in the middle of the sharply curving exit road, he was forced to swerve dangerously onto the shoulder, then lurch back onto the road to avoid a weeping willow. That brought him face-to-face with another slightly swerving object.

The bird-watcher had no time to react.

He was sent flying into the air, looking like one of those circus tumblers performing a gravity-defying finale.

He came down with a loud thud.

Then lay still.