The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [127]
In the lobby, she glanced at the rumpled man and sighed. “You know how fast Mach 2.4 is?” He admitted that he did not. She said, “Well, you don’t drive your car that fast.”
“To be honest with you, my car has been temporarily repossessed.”
“You and my dad aren’t doing too well. Everything’s repossessed.”
Unhappily he smoothed the flamingos on his shirt. “We had a lot of setbacks lately. Looking for the Queen.”
“Sure.” She tapped an insignia on her uniform jacket. “Well, Mach 2.4 is what a Navy Tomcat F-14 could do. I trained on one. The Tomcat could go over 1500 miles per hour.”
He nodded appreciatively. “That’s fast.”
“It could climb 30,000 feet a minute. The Super Hornet goes even faster. And you know what? They’re replacing it with jets that may be able to go over 2500 miles per hour.”
“That’s very fast.”
Annie walked Raffy quickly past Miss Napp at reception while she was preoccupied with her fingernails. “The old Blackbird SR-71 can fly at 33 miles per minute, that’s Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound. It flies faster than a speeding bullet. Plus, there are unmanned jets that can go twice as fast as that.”
They hurried toward the front entrance. “Why?” he asked her.
“Why?”
Raffy stopped her. “Why do you need to go faster than 1500 miles per hour?”
Before Annie could answer, a tall well-built young man, looking upset, suddenly bolted around the corner at the end of the lobby. She was astonished. It was the same man who had been staring at her from the newspaper rack in the St. Louis airport last night. He still wore the old boots and jeans but now had on a blue linen shirt instead of a blue T-shirt.
Equally surprising, Raffy let out a curse of horror when he saw the man. He squeezed his hands in supplication at Annie. “Help me!” But without waiting for help he bolted to the front doors like a sprinter and slipped quickly through them.
Annie saw the man recognize the Cuban musician as well and start through the lobby toward them. She could tell he hadn’t seen her yet. To slow him down, just at the last second when he passed by, she crouched as if to tie her shoe and the man tripped over her back.
His arms were warm as he pulled her up to her feet. Both said they were sorry for the “accident.” He recognized her. “Wait a minute!” he growled. “You’re Annie Goode. Damn it, you’re here with Rook!”
She thought the man must be one of Feliz Diaz’s criminal henchmen. That he must have been in St. Louis on Diaz’s behalf, chasing her father, that he must have been the man who’d beaten her father up. “Let go of me!” Spinning free, she dropped back to a crouch and pushed him. He lost his balance, tripped backwards and crashed into an empty wheelchair.
Annie raced out the front doors before he could untangle himself.
“Malpy!” She shouted for the Maltese.
On the lawn, the dog was trotting around with a cheap little American flag clamped between his teeth. A candy striper was handing out the flags to patients, presumably for a belated Fourth of July. Malpy effortlessly dodged two overweight security guards who were trying to catch him. The old people fiercely cheered as he dashed through their wheelchairs and leaped into Annie’s arms.
Rook, who’d been hiding again in the huge hedge of bougainvilleas, hurried her into her rental car. Across the street a city bus wheezed to a stop; a man using two canes slowly climbed out of it.
Opening his car window while Annie was backing out of the parking place, Raffy craned to look behind him. “Go, go! There’s Sergeant Hart!”
Annie glanced amazed at the crippled man who’d been left on the curb by the departing bus. She pointed. “That’s Daniel Hart? The man getting off the bus with the canes?”
“No! Him!” Raffy pointed back to the Golden Days lawn. “The man that’s chasing us!”
The young man in the blue shirt was running in and out of clusters of old people like a running back through an extremely sluggish defense.
“I thought that man worked for Feliz Diaz! I thought he was after you!”
“He is after me! He’s