The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [89]
Moved to sympathy, she reached for his hand. “Brad, did you ever feel like there was nothing else to want?” Her question confused him; he just stared perplexed at her. She smiled. “I want to apologize. Because I never made you feel peaceful and you never made me feel peaceful and I should have told you sooner it wasn’t working and you wouldn’t have had to prove it with Melody.”
He spoke solicitously. “A, you’re just all upset. Because of your dad dying of cancer and all.” He shook his head in sympathetic mystification at the odd fact of mortality.
She gave up, turned her neck side to side. “You’re right. I’m just all upset.”
“It’s tough. And it’ll be tough on Sam. I’d like her to catch a break.”
Annie looked at him carefully. He had the twitching eyes he always had when fearful of being caught out. She said, “You got my dad out of this airport for her, didn’t you?”
“Hey, don’t be crazy.”
Leaning over the table, Annie grabbed the sides of his head and turned him back to her. “He was in the airport; the police had spotted him and were watching the gates and he said he couldn’t risk contact with me, even though I just flew here in a fucking tornado. He told me to meet him in Miami.” Both Brad’s eyelashes were flickering, twice, a pause, twice more. When she was only five, her father had taught her how, playing poker, people can’t help giving signals about their hands. Brad had dozens of these “tells,” including the eyelash flicker. “So my question for you, Brad?” She paused for a long stare, knowing it would break him. “How are you getting my dad to Miami?”
It took only minutes to trip Brad into admitting that he had helped Sam out (“That’s all I did, try to help!”) by talking to a friend who had a cargo express company that flew out of Lambert to Miami.
Under the table, his leg bounced up and down. “The way Sam talked, all your dad wants is not to die in a prison cell. Why is that too much to ask?”
Her eyebrow went up. “Sam’ll say or do anything for her brother.”
Brad didn’t see why Sam shouldn’t.
His logic stopped her. “Okay. I suppose it’s not too much to ask.” Annie studied the Ryan Monocoupe that had belonged to Lindbergh. “I don’t know if he’s really dying.”
Brad shrugged sadly. “Daddy Alton was on oxygen one minute and the next minute he was on his way to heaven.” Brad horribly sounded exactly like his mother Mama Spring. She wondered if she herself would start saying things Clark or Sam said. Would she start making awful puns and comparing everything in life to an old movie?
Brad was going on about how all he’d ever wanted was to be helpful. How his St. Louis office could bring in a machinist to look at the King of the Sky’s engine and see what could be done to get it flying again. How in the morning he could get her on a flight to Miami. Meanwhile, why didn’t Annie stay the night in St. Louis? Hopper Jets had a suite right here at the Sheraton. They could both stay. He’d sleep on the couch.
Annie slowly shook her fork at him like a metronome. “Don’t try.”
He looked earnest. “We’re still married.”
“We’re legally separated. Let’s keep it legal.”
“Tell me what you want, A, you’ve got it.”
What she wanted was to find her father as soon as she could.
Brad smiled. “You need a private jet.”
“You’ve got plenty of them.”
He tapped the embossed logo on his glossy briefcase: Hopper Jets, Inc. “That’s right. Doing great. Private jets—it’s the way everybody’s going. You hear on the news how the attorney general, what’s his name—? He’s flying private from now on, I heard that on the news tonight. The threat level.”
“From what?