War Lord

Five

I called Morrow back. The guy told me the police had been notified, along with the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Bureau. Beyond that, he said, nothing could be done — not until morning. It was late — or, rather, early — by the time we left Shadow Bar. The place was closed to the public at two a.m., but management kept it open for Alabama and a couple of her close friends from Bally’s. I also stayed back in case I was needed — I wasn’t.

Nevertheless, it was almost three a.m. by the time I hailed a cab for Alabama and her friends, who she’d asked to stay over at her place to keep her company. I flagged down another cab for myself, and a yellow and green Prius pulled to the sidewalk. As I opened the door, a woman slid in ahead of me to claim the back seat. I stood there holding the door, working up to being indignant.

‘You goin’ my way, honey?’ called a voice from inside.

There weren’t many ways to go in Vegas, so there was a good chance I just might be. I bent down to say sure and noticed the black dress with the polished stones around the hemline. Sugar.

‘It’s Vin, right?’ she asked when I hesitated.

‘Yeah,’ I said and got in.

She held out her hand. ‘Sugar.’

‘I know,’ I told her. ‘We’ve met already, at Bally’s, in the change room. You might not remember.’ Her fingers were long and slender, the fingernails real and painted a soft pink, her skin warm, moisturized and fragrant.

‘Sure I remember. But we never exchanged names, so it ain’t official. An’ y’all have seen me naked, so y’all have me at a disadvantage.’

I had, and I’d like to again.

The driver was getting edgy sitting in traffic, banking it up. ‘We headin’ somewheres, folks?’ he asked, half turning in his seat.

‘Where you goin’?’ Sugar asked me.

‘Bally’s.’

‘What do you know, me too. Bally’s, please,’ she said to the driver, then to me: ‘You’re stayin’ there, ain’t you? I heard you say something about it to ’Bama.’

‘Yes.’

‘You a frien’ of hers?’

‘I’m helping her out with a problem.’

‘You’re from back East. I can tell by yo’ accent. That’s a long way to come. Must be a big problem she got.’ Sugar shifted in her seat, uncrossed her leg one way and recrossed it the other, her body curling like smoke, her perfume fresh and imported. She smiled at me, eyes set to bedroom mode. ‘I think I’m gonna like you. ’Bama has good taste.’ Something amused her. ‘I sure liked the taste of Randy.’ She licked her lips. There was no mistaking her meaning.

My collar felt tight. The driver was somehow managing to avoid colliding with other vehicles, despite the fact that his eyes were superglued to the rear-view mirror.

‘I spoke with one of the girls about half an hour ago,’ Sugar continued. ‘She said somethin’ had happened and that ’Bama was upset. Somethin’ about Randy.’

‘You’ll have to ask Alabama,’ I said.

Sugar smiled at me, her lips parting, one eyebrow arched. One leg rubbed against the other. If I’d been required to say anything more at that moment, I probably would have stuttered.

‘Yes, good idea. I’ll do that,’ she continued. ‘So, the important question is, how long will y’all be stayin’ in Vegas?’

A thud followed by a lift under the cab’s front wheels told me we’d hit the ramp leading up to Bally’s forecourt.

‘Until I leave,’ I said, more cryptically than I’d intended.

‘Well, obviously.’ Sugar did that uncrossing thing again with her legs, preparing to get out, the cab coming to a stop. ‘Sounds like longer than a day or two, at least.’

‘Who knows,’ I said. The meter said eight bucks. I gave the driver twelve and asked for a receipt.

‘Maybe we could have a drink. You got a card?’ she asked me.

I handed one over and she held it up to the light. ‘So, Mr Special Agent, y’all have come all the way from Andrews Air Force Base, Washington DC. What’s so special about you?’

‘I’ll tell you some other time, perhaps. You probably want to get to bed before the sun rises.’ That’s what I wanted to say, but what came out was, ‘Umm… er…’ followed by a croaky kind of swallowing sound that ended in a squeak.

‘Can I borrow your pen, please, honey?’ Sugar asked the driver.

The way the guy looked at her told me he’d have been prepared to hand over his Prius.

She made a slow circular motion at me with the pen. I got the message and turned around. She rested the card on my shoulder and wrote on it. Then she whispered in my ear, ‘Use it, don’t lose it,’ and let the card flutter into my lap. ‘Goodnight,’ she said, her door opening.

‘’Night,’ I replied to her bare, smooth back. I fumbled for the card when she was gone. A phone number, ending with an exclamation mark, was penned on the flipside.

Once she’d disappeared from view, and time and space returned to normal, the driver twisted around in his seat and said, ‘So who’s a lucky motherfucker?’

The street Alabama and Randy lived on was in Summerlin, a suburb twelve miles northwest of the Strip. The street itself seemed, at best, semi-occupied. Every third house or so was on the market, a faded ‘For Sale’ sign out front with a bleached photo of a smiling agent looking more like a ghost. The front yards of these unsold houses were mostly mini dustbowls of dead plant life and brown grass, the houses looking as discarded and dried out as shed rattlesnake skins. Alabama and Randy’s place was in the middle of a small green belt of occupancy, a little island holding out against the rising tide of foreclosure. A sprinkler system soaked the green lawn of the house next door, a miniature rainbow hanging over a flowerbed bursting with purple and red flowers.

I got out of the rental and went up the short path to the stairs to Randy and Alabama’s veranda. My knuckles were poised to rap on the front door when it opened and Alabama appeared. She didn’t say a word. I caught a glimpse of her eyes as she walked out and made for the car. They were red-rimmed behind a pair of large black sunglasses that took up half her face. Despite the sunglasses, or maybe even because of them, she looked haggard, as much as someone like Alabama could look haggard. I figured she hadn’t slept much, if at all, and if she had it was probably in the old blue jeans and faded Giants t-shirt she was wearing. A red Caesars ball cap completed her ensemble for the morning’s unpleasantness. For me, it was jeans, a plain white tee and runners. I opened the car door for her and she slid in, still without saying a word.

Shortly thereafter we pulled into the lot outside Nevada Aircraft Brokers. Two vehicles were parked outside. They had a federal look about them, that is to say tired and worn out. Alabama didn’t comment on their presence, perhaps because I’d already briefed her on what to expect as we drove there. Keeping us company on the rear passenger seat was the small ice chest and a Bally’s branded bag.

I parked beside a white Ford Explorer with darkened windows and an FAA sticker on the rear bumper, and got out. The desert heat was thick with the smell of kerosene and burned aviation jet fuel. Three hundred yards over on the active runway, a United Airlines 767 lifted its chin and strained for height, its engines grinding through the heat of the morning. I collected the ice chest and bag off the rear seat — I didn’t want the hand fricasseed in the oven the rental would soon become in the morning sun.

Nevada Aircraft Brokers was housed in a large white modular building, gold heat-reflecting film on its windows and front double doors. Behind the flat-roofed box, beyond a mesh fence topped with razor wire, several white executive jets gleamed on the ramp. Alabama and I walked toward the building’s gold-filmed front door just as a man and woman opened it, both in their early thirties, slightly overweight and dressed in a hundred percent polyester. The two walked out, not in any particular hurry, and headed for the Ford Explorer with the FAA decal. The guy smiled at Alabama; the woman gave her a frown. Nothing unusual in Alabama’s universe, I figured.

On the other side of those gold doors the temperature dropped into the low twenties. We stepped into a waiting room that took up half the width of the building, a white Laminex reception desk at one end occupied by a large older woman with brassy hair, and down the other end a frosted glass wall with a door. Behind the woman hung framed photos of executive jets like the ones outside, the pilots visible in their cockpit windows. There was a leather couch to sit on and a low coffee table in front of it scattered with assorted financial and aircraft magazines and newspapers. A coffee machine and a water cooler stood in one corner, and a slot machine held down the one opposite; SLEEPING BEAUTY said the colorful lettering on it. Now that I thought about it, there was a musical hum in the air, sprinkled with what I supposed were meant to be magical bells, the same sound I’d heard dominating the reception foyer at Bally’s. A pictorial showed Sleeping Beauty herself comatose on a bed, Prince Charming coming through the window behind her. From the looks of it, Ms Beauty was in for either some morning glory or a rude awakening, depending on how she felt about strangers in her bedroom. The slot took quarters for a chance at winning a cool hundred-thousand-dollar jackpot. I had some change in my pocket — maybe later, on our way out.

The receptionist peeked at us over bifocals, her eyes small in the expanse of heavily made-up flesh around them, like marbles pushed into dough. Chubby gold-ringed fingers paused over a keyboard. She touched a mole on her cheek like it was a button that would switch on recognition, but doing so failed to help her penetrate Alabama’s cunning disguise of sunglasses and ball cap. ‘Can I help you folks at all?’

‘Special Agent Vin Cooper, here to see Ty Morrow,’ I said, placing the bag and esky down and my card on her desk, the gold leaf on the embossed OSI agent badge a nice match for the windows. ‘And this is Randy Sweetwater’s partner,’ I said.

‘Oh, Alabama! Is that you, honey? I didn’t recognize you with those glasses on.’

Why did I ever doubt how Clark Kent got away with it?

‘Hello, Carol,’ said Alabama, taking off the sunglasses, revealing red eyes above deep black, sleep-deprived shadows.

‘Oh, you poor thing,’ said Carol. ‘Can I get you something, honey? A cup of coffee? Water?’

‘No thanks, really…’

‘Well, whatever you need, just ask. Mr Morrow is busy with some folks. Shouldn’t be long now.’

Carol seemed uncomfortable. I wondered whether it was because we chose to remain standing or the fact that neither Alabama nor I appeared at all interested in playing slots. Whatever, after a few moments she got up, went to the door in the frosted glass wall, opened it and popped her head around the corner. I heard her murmur something in a low voice before turning and informing us that Ty would just be a minute.

Less than a minute later, dark shapes appeared in the frosted glass and the door swung open. Two men in suits that were coffee-stain brown came out. NTSB, I figured, given the authorities Morrow said he’d notified. They turned and said words like ‘thanks’ and ‘we’ll be in touch’ to a short guy in his late fifties wearing polished black shoes, navy-blue suit pants, a pale blue shirt and pink striped tie, loosened at the collar. Had to be Ty Morrow. He looked well kept, like he rolled in money on a regular basis. His tan face glowed with a laser-burnished gloss, and his shaped and dyed black eyebrows sat above light gray eyes that matched the professionally layered silver hair swept back behind his ears. The guy had country club written all over him. But, like they say — mustn’t judge.

‘Alabama,’ he said, putting an arm around her shoulder. ‘I’m soooo sorry.’

This apology seemed to confirm Alabama’s worst fears and her hand went to cover her eyes as her face crumpled.

‘Agent Cooper,’ Morrow said, offering a quick handshake as he ushered Alabama into the meeting room. Morrow was Texan, longhorn cows in his drawl. ‘Good of y’all both to come on over.’

He guided Alabama into one of the expensive-looking aluminum and black mesh chairs arrayed around a table, the top of which had been made to look like the skin of an airplane — white, powder-coated and riveted aluminum — the winged NAB logo in the center. I took the chair beside her and put the ice chest and bag on the floor. Morrow sat opposite, hands clasped together in front of him.

‘So, what’s the latest from the authorities?’ I asked.

‘Nothing new, I’m afraid,’ Morrow said. ‘Randy departed Henderson International slightly ahead of schedule, after taking the required break. He was vectored into the airway, cleared to twenty thousand feet. Local air traffic control handed him on to the flight information region for southwest vectors, and he flew on his way. He made all the scheduled stops on his flight plan, as well as all mandatory radio calls, and no problems were reported. Everything was normal until he failed to make the appropriate radio calls approaching Darwin. I received notice that he was missing late yesterday.’ Morrow glanced at Alabama. ‘Ah’m sorry, honey,’ he said again.

‘He make any calls in that sector?’ I asked.

‘No. The standard ones departing Henderson Field in the Solomons, but nothing after that.’

‘No Mayday call?’

‘No.’

‘He didn’t phone me from Hawaii or anywhere,’ said Alabama, blowing her nose with a tissue, her face red, her eyes redder. ‘He always phones me.’

‘There’s a search underway,’ said Morrow.

I didn’t ask where they were searching. Haystacks didn’t get much bigger than the Pacific. Ask Amelia Earhart.

‘Randy was a great guy and a hell of a pilot,’ Morrow continued, issuing the last rites.

‘What kind of plane was he flying?’ I asked.

‘A Hawker Beechcraft Super King Air 350.’ He opened up a folder, took out a color photo and passed it to me. ‘That’s the actual aircraft. Eighteen months old. Practically new. The type has an unbeatable reputation for reliability.’

A reputation Randy had just dented. I glanced at the photo. The King Air was a large, sleek-looking twin turboprop with a T-tail. Windows down its side indicated that it could take maybe a dozen passengers. ‘What’s the range of a plane like this?’ I asked.

‘That’s a 350ER — ER for extended range. Two thousand two hundred nautical miles, plus reserve. He also carried an internal bladder in case of headwinds. The leg from LAX to Hawaii was right on the aircraft’s range.’

‘So fuel was going to be tight.’

‘Randy’s problem wasn’t going to be fuel, it was boredom. The King Air’s no jet. He was in the air a lotta hours.’

I had nowhere to go, but then I wasn’t an experienced aircraft accident investigator. The flight had originated on US soil, which meant the NTSB would be putting this one under its microscope.

Morrow made a huffing sound, an ironic smile on his lips. ‘What’s up?’ I asked him.

‘I was going to send someone else. Randy wanted the job, practically begged me for it. Said he’d never been to Australia before.’

Alabama bit a knuckle.

‘How many hops did he have to make?’ I asked.

‘Quite a few. He was going to do it over an eight- to ten-day period, depending on the weather. Flying conditions were good, by the way.’

‘Did he have a co-pilot?’

‘No, flew solo.’

‘Long solo flight.’

‘Randy had the option of taking a co-pilot, but he chose to go it alone. As I said, boredom was going to be an issue.’

‘Any idea what might have happened?’

Morrow shook his head. ‘None whatsoever.’

Alabama had recovered a little composure. I stopped asking questions so that she could ask a few of her own.

Morrow beat her to it. ‘So you’re OSI?’ he said, my card in his fingers.

I nodded.

‘Local? From Nellis?’

‘No, out from DC.’

‘Randy was a civilian — no longer Air Force. Are you on this official-like?’

‘No. Just a friend of the family’s. Have the authorities told you what happens next?’

Morrow dropped my card in his folder. ‘They said all we can do is wait, see what the search turns up.’

‘I know Randy’s alive,’ said Alabama. ‘I can feel it.’

Morrow gave her a pitying smile. ‘I’m sorry, honey,’ he said, clearly not a believer in Alabama’s instincts.

‘I’d know if Randy was gone,’ she said, bolder this time, assured by her own conviction. ‘Is there a chance he could have had some trouble and put down near an island somewhere?’

‘I guess anything’s possible, but…’ The look he gave us said there was more chance of relieving Sleeping Beauty out in reception of her jackpot.

‘What about the plane’s electronic locator beacon?’ I asked.

‘It had one. As far as I know, it didn’t light up.’

‘Isn’t that unusual?’

He shrugged. ‘ELBs are electronic gadgets — they can fail like any other electronic gadget. There’ll be an investigation. All we can do is wait and see.’

I leaned down, picked up the ice chest and put it on the table. Time to let Randy’s boss know that there might be more to the disappearance of his aircraft than he or the authorities thought.

‘What you got there?’ Morrow asked, half a smile lifting part of his face.

‘Several days after your King Air departed LAX, Ms Thornton here received this.’ I opened the chest and turned it around.

Morrow leaned forward and peered inside. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed, that tan of his appearing more like badly applied makeup as the blood drained from his cheeks.

‘This is what brought me to Vegas,’ I said. ‘After we leave your office, we’re taking it to the metro PD. If you look carefully, you can see an Air Force Academy ring on its pinky that we believe belonged to Randy. The package also came with a greeting card asking for a ransom in exchange for Randy’s life.’

Morrow sat back in his seat, mouth open and probably dry. ‘Jesus,’ he repeated, whispering it the second time around. The guy was in a state of shock. Perhaps giving him a peek at Thing was a little on the melodramatic side, but he had to know that there might be another angle being played here. ‘Is that Randy’s… you know… his…’ Morrow asked, voice cracking.

‘His hand?’ I said. ‘No, but you can see the problem, right? Alabama here was understandably concerned when she received this home delivery, but reassured because, one, this wasn’t Randy’s hand and, two, he was supposedly flying a plane to Australia. But now the place she thought he was safely tucked away in — your King Air — has disappeared.’

Morrow’s face had gone a splotchy white.

‘Are you okay, sir?’ I asked. I didn’t want the guy having a heart attack.

‘If Sweetwater’s not in that plane, the… the damn insurance company won’t pay out,’ Morrow stuttered under his breath, the full force of the implications suddenly hitting him in his wallet.

And those who say you shouldn’t prejudge just don’t know shit from ice cream.

I called ahead and asked Detective Sergeant Ike Bozey to meet Alabama and me at the desk sergeant’s area and escort us through. I wasn’t keen on getting searched. I could warn the guy at the x-ray station that there was an amputated human hand on my person, but police I had no connection with were likely to get jumpy about this and I had no desire to be forced onto the floor at the point of a quivering Glock.

‘Hey, Cooper,’ said Bozey in a voice full of gravel. ‘Good to meet you. And this is Alabama, right?’

Alabama waved.

‘Coming through,’ said the detective sergeant, beckoning at us to come past the usual search procedures. ‘These people are my guests,’ he announced loudly.

‘On your head be it, Bozey,’ the desk sergeant called out, making a note.

‘Get a dick in your ear, fatso,’ Bozey replied loudly. The sergeant he was referring to was on the skinny side of scrawny, his neck filling his shirt like a straw fills a glass.

‘Fuck you,’ came back at him.

In an aside, Bozey said, ‘He’s married to my sister… Makes for an interesting Thanksgiving.’

Alabama and I fell in behind the detective sergeant, a former light-heavyweight boxer who walked like one. The guy also came with a heavy New York accent and buzz-cut brown hair, tending to gray. A wide scar was clearly visible meandering over the crown of his skull. He’d taken a bullet there that, according to Arlen, had exposed a part of his brain. It happened the day he took on five thugs attempting to sexually assault a fifteen-year-old girl in broad daylight, after dragging her into a back alleyway. One of the perps had fired a .38 at Bozey, the slug digging out a piece of his skull, but the guy had kept on fighting, even madder. Three of the five perps ran off after Bozey had knocked the other two out cold. When the cops turned up they found him sitting on one of the alleged attackers, trying to fit the pieces of bone back into the hole in his own head. When Bozey finally got out of hospital, he joined New York’s finest, only to quit a couple of years later to move west with his sister. Vegas was the place he decided to put down roots, after she met and married — the desk sergeant, I assumed — and Bozey joined the force again.

We rounded the corner. ‘Arlen said I should lend you every assistance. So, here I am, lending.’ We came around another corner and this time the hallway broadened into open-plan office space populated by a mixture of uniformed and plainclothes police. The sound of computer keyboard clatter dominated, punctuated by several phones that rang and rang and rang.

‘How do you know Arlen?’ I asked him.

‘Can’t say,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘’Cause it happened here in Vegas, and there are rules.’

‘I’ll ask him.’

‘Won’t do you no good.’

We arrived at a cubicle-sized space that reminded me of my office at Andrews: gray partitions and one entire face covered with papers and photos and sticky notes and maps, some of them hand-drawn. It felt like home.

‘I hear you work at Bally’s,’ Bozey said to Alabama.

‘That’s right,’ she told him as he pulled in a chair for her to sit on.

‘That’s a good clean show.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘And that’s a damn shame,’ he said, giving her a grin full of mischief. He cleared his throat and took a seat. ‘Now, what can I do for you folks?’

‘Arlen told you nothing?’ I asked.

‘Not a word, except that you was family.’

‘That mean you’re gonna start calling me names?’ I asked.

He grinned. ‘Maybe.’

‘Okay, well, Alabama received this in a FedEx box,’ I said, handing over the ice chest.

‘Do I want to know what’s in here before I lift the lid?’ he asked.

‘It’s a body part,’ I warned him.

Bozey opened it, took a peek inside, sucked his lips into a seam and raised an eyebrow. ‘Right,’ he said.

‘There’s a note.’ I took the letter, now protected in a clear plastic ziplock, from the Bally’s bag and passed it to him.

‘When did this arrive?’ he asked, reading it through the plastic.

‘Getting on for six days ago,’ I said.

‘That’s not helpful. Six days lost, fourteen to go, according to this. Why not bring it in sooner?’

‘I was scared,’ Alabama admitted. ‘If I contacted the police and the kidnappers found out…’

‘Doll, these people don’t want you contacting the police because they’re scared. They’re scared there’ll be no payday; they’re scared their asses will get stomped on by law enforcement; they’re scared they’ll spend the best part of the rest of their lives eating someone else’s dick in Club Fed… Sorry, just don’t get me started.’

‘Any other hot buttons we should know about?’ I said.

‘I’ll tell you after you push ’em. Has any further contact been made?’

‘No,’ said Alabama. ‘And this is not Randy’s hand.’

I took it from there and filled Bozey in on what we knew — that perhaps the ring was the boyfriend’s and that, at the time his kidnappers claimed they were sawing pieces off him, he was supposedly flying a plane to Australia. I then told him the news we’d received last night: that Randy’s plane had gone missing and was now presumed crashed in the Pacific, somewhere between the Solomon Islands and Darwin.

‘Could be an elaborate con gone wrong,’ the detective concluded without hesitation. ‘What’s the ransom?’

‘Fifteen million,’ I said.

‘And you don’t got it,’ he remarked, looking at Alabama.

‘On what we make at Showgirls?’

Bozey shrugged. ‘Honestly? Not a lot of what you’re saying makes much sense to me. But until something else turns up, I can see pretty clearly that you do have one small problem.’

‘To go with the big ones,’ I said.

‘Yeah. As far as we know, this hand could have come from a university cadaver. My problem is, well, I can’t see where the crime has been committed — nothing I can investigate, anyway.’

‘I figured as much,’ I said.

‘Then how can I be of assistance?’

‘CSI — forensics. Put the hand through the wringer. It might turn up something to go on. There’s also the note.’ I motioned at the Bally’s bag. ‘And in here is most of the original packaging everything came in.’

The sergeant rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know… Vegas is a pretty busy port of call, forensically speaking, and we don’t have a lot of those kinds of resources to splash around here.’

‘Oh, sure you do,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen the TV show.’