The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [83]
It was the same alphanumerical that made up part of one of her father’s passwords. So that was it. NX211. That’s why the PS in her father’s FedEx said “Lindbergh.” Now she had the bulk of the code, which combined her birth certificate information with the ID number of Lindbergh’s plane. All she needed was the other plane whose identification number was the last part of the password. She could solve this problem and return to her life.
In her peripheral vision she noticed a man, about her age, leaning against the wall by a news rack, leafing through magazines. He looked up, smiling broadly at her. He was a very handsome man with short dark-gold curled hair, wearing tight jeans, a sky-blue T-shirt, and old brown leather cowboy boots. Flustered, she forced herself to look at him. Neither of them looked away. Then Annie continued through the B/C/D connector and headed toward the Admirals Club.
As she passed by this young man, he waved at her. She waved back, but sarcastically.
The young man was the Miami detective whom D. K. Destin had forced Brad to bring along with him from Emerald, the young man who had persuaded D. K. that he had only Annie’s best interests at heart. He had been waiting outside the Admirals Club for Annie’s arrival ever since he’d landed at the airport in the Hopper Jet. As he watched Annie hurry away, he flipped open his cell phone and spoke briefly but urgently into it.
***
Back in Emerald, D. K. Destin, sitting in his wheelchair in the small messy office of his close-to-bankrupt Airworks, suddenly had an urge to call Sam, despite the late hour. He was a man who always acted on his sudden impulses. “I just got a feeling,” the Navy vet told Sam. He described the detective he’d met tonight named Dan Hart—
Sam jumped out of her bed. “Daniel Hart? From Miami?”
“Yeah, him. He was here, looking for Annie. I got Brad to give him a lift in his jet to St. Louis.”
Sam muted the DVD of Simone Signoret in Diabolique. “Why’d you do that? Sergeant Hart’s after Jack. He wants to arrest Jack.”
“Yeah, let him. This guy Hart said Annie’s in over her head with Jack’s crap and I believe him.” D. K. shook out his graying cornrows and spun his wheelchair around to look at a knotty-pine wall crowded with photographs. He located a framed clipping from the News of Emerald Weekly showing a grinning fourteen-year-old Annie pinning a ribbon on him as he sat in his wheelchair in front of the King of the Sky; a blue ribbon she’d just won in the national youth speed race. “Anyhow, why rag on me? You’re the one who told him Annie took off for St. Louis.”
Sam sighed. “I know. He tricked it out of me.”
“Nah, instincts,” D. K. insisted. “I got a good feeling from this guy, Sammy. It’s like I get a tickling in my legs every now and again and I know who’s gonna win the Super Bowl. Hart’s a good guy. He’s trying to help Annie out of a big mess Jack’s trying to get her into. Let the guy do it.”
“Brad can do it. That’s what I sent Brad to do! Get Jack out of St. Louis before he gets arrested.”
D. K. laughed. “You’re such a goddamn fairy godmother. Did you send in the Marines too?”
“Are you still in that office, D. K? Go home.”
“No thanks.” Since the death of his wife, D. K. had hated the sight of his house and almost always slept on the daybed in his trailer at the airfield. “Sammy, love’s a bitch.”
“Love’s a bastard.”
“That too,” he agreed. “Nothing that’s much better though. Beer maybe.”
“Cigarettes.” Sam sighed. “Hey, listen, when I’m eighty, I’m going to start smoking and drinking again.”
“Your mistake was quitting,” D. K. told her. “Like love. You gotta keep at it.”
Chapter 26
Midnight
Inside the spacious Admirals Club, Annie asked a receptionist if she would page Jack Peregrine. To her surprise, the receptionist gestured at Annie’s naval cap and slacks and shirt and said, “Oh, Jack Peregrine. Hang on.” She came back with a co-worker, who asked, “Are you Lt. Anne Goode?”
“Yes, I am,” said Annie, surprised. “Why?”
They told her that a nice elderly woman had come into the Club