War Lord (7 page)

‘I’ll see you later,’ said Sugar, kissing me on the cheek. She waved to us both and swam off.

I lifted myself out of the pool, the concrete scorching hot against the palms of my hands.

‘Can I get you folks a drink?’ asked a waitress who materialized beside us.

I could use something. I checked with Alabama. She was wringing her hands and perhaps that look on her face was anxiety and nothing to do with what she might have seen happening in the pool.

‘You okay?’ I asked her. ‘Can we get out of the sun?’ she said, and headed for the bar without looking back. ‘Scotch – a double – no ice,’ she told the barkeep when she arrived.

He lifted an eyebrow at me. ‘Same, with rocks,’ I said.

‘They’ve found him.’ Alabama took off her sunglasses, her eyes red and raw – worse than I remembered from the morning.

I didn’t need to ask who, so I asked where.

‘His plane . . . it crashed in Australia, after all. Came down in some swamp. Morrow called me half an hour ago. He got a call from the FAA.’

I pulled my phone and saw there were two missed calls – from Morrow and Alabama. I had to ask the painful question. ‘Was his body found with the plane?’

‘No.’ Alabama upended her glass and drank the scotch in a single gulp. She put the glass on the counter and gestured for another. ‘No body.’

My cell started ringing. The window told me it was a local Vegas number. I excused myself and answered it.

‘Cooper? Bozey,’ said the voice in the speaker.

‘Hey.’ I walked a little away from the bar.

‘Just letting you know I got a call from the FAA about your friend Sweetwater.’

I was wondering how the FAA knew who to call when Bozey added, ‘I’d only just gotten off the phone to aviation authorities, following up on the inquiries arising from the meeting with you and Alabama.’

‘Just heard the news myself,’ I said. ‘No body, apparently.’

‘No. A place called Darwin’s the nearest city. The local PD is out looking. Tricky countryside.’

‘A swamp, I heard.’

‘A wildlife sanctuary.’

‘What sort of wildlife they got there? Koala bears?’

‘Didn’t ask. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted if anything else turns up.’

The line went dead. I turned back to the bar in time to see Alabama throwing her head back, downing a scotch. Assuming it was another double, that would make it half a dozen shots in less than five minutes.

‘Vegas PD heard,’ I told her.

‘He’s still alive. I know it.’

I nodded, not as convinced as she was about that. And given her level of anxiety, maybe she wasn’t so sure either.

‘He could have crawled away, got lost or something.’ Alabama’s speech was starting to slur, along with her reason.

I ordered another scotch for myself and a club soda for her. My confidence that I would be able to see this through to some kind of positive conclusion was fading fast. Randy was down in a swamp eight thousand miles away, surrounded by wild koalas, and I had no doubt that he was dead, or about to be, which also meant that the mystery around the severed hand and the ransom was moot. There wasn’t a lot I could do to help, except maybe pay the bar bill. I put some cash on the counter.

Alabama wrapped a hand around the club soda that had appeared on the bar. ‘I saw you and Sugar, y’know,’ she said, her eyes flat.

I swallowed. Guilty.

‘I knew she’d get to you. Men are so
stupid
.’

That was a hard one to argue with.

‘Did she ask you about Randy and me while she was doing you?’

Her mouth was under water at the time, and otherwise too engaged to ask questions, but I knew what she meant. ‘No, she didn’t,’ I lied.

‘Bullshit.’ Alabama looked at her half-glass of club soda and then back at me. Maybe she was considering whether or not to throw it over me. She put the glass down heavily on the counter, spilling some of its contents. ‘I can’t blame you. I’d just love to know what it is about me that makes her so competitive. And you should ask yourself – why you?’

‘Why me?’

‘Well, you’re not exactly her type. No offense, but she likes pretty boys with money.’

‘None taken.’ I didn’t tell her Sugar thought I had a big motor.

Alabama’s eyes crossed momentarily, as if she was grappling with a puzzle. ‘You’re no oil painting, Cooper,’ she said, in case I’d misunderstood.

I’d asked myself the same question Alabama was asking: why me? Maybe I shouldn’t have been satisfied with the answer Sugar had provided.

‘Thanks for nothing, Cooper,’ she said suddenly and walked off a little unsteadily into the hot sun.

The barman took our glasses, wiped the counter and shook his head at me, unimpressed. I countered his look with a mind-your-own-business-pal look of my own, and went back to the pool. A half-hearted attempt to find Sugar failed. She was nowhere around. I’d had enough sun so I picked up my things and handed my lounge chair over to a college girl hovering nearby.

*

There was a flight back East at seven forty-five the following morning, so I booked it. Nothing more could be done for Alabama, not by me at least, and the scene at the bar left me with the feeling that my welcome was worn out anyway. I decided to avoid the morning panic and check out that evening. There was no queue at reception so I went straight up to the clerk behind the computer, gave her my room number, answered the usual questions about the minibar and so forth, and listened to the beguiling magical bells of a bank of Sleeping Beauties down in the pit while she tallied my account. After reviewing a few forms and clattering away on the keyboard, she announced, ‘It’s already been settled, sir.’

‘The bill?’

‘Yep, you’re all square.’

‘Who paid it?’

‘Ms Alabama Thornton.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. I pulled out my cell and dialed my benefactor’s number as I drifted toward the dormitory of Sleeping Beauties. ‘Alabama, it’s Cooper.’

‘Hello.’

‘I just went to pay my hotel bill but you beat me to it. You didn’t need to do that.’ Silence. ‘Alabama?’

‘Yes, I did. You didn’t need to come here. You felt obliged.’ The tightness in her voice told me she’d been doing plenty more crying.

‘I was happy to help out.’

‘It’s over. Randy’s gone. You’re . . . you’re free to go.’

I hadn’t realized there was a lock on the door. ‘Okay, but let me buy you dinner, at least.’

‘I have a show to do tonight. Another time.’ Her tone suggested another time might well be when folks were ice skating in hell.

‘I wish it could have worked out different,’ I said.

‘Me too.’

Silence.

‘Okay, well – goodbye,’ I said, not a lot more to say.

‘Sugar has split.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Sugar. She up and left – back to wherever it was she came from in the first place. Handed in her notice this afternoon; didn’t give a reason. Maybe when she heard about Randy, that he was . . . she just . . . I suppose she just lost interest.’

Was Randy’s death the motivation for Sugar’s departure? Maybe it was. The news of the crash had been made public after my rubdown in the pool. Sugar certainly hadn’t mentioned anything about leaving. ‘If there’s something I can do for you, Alabama, just let me know.’

‘I will,’ she said. ‘And thanks – I mean that.’ There was a change in her tone that told me she did in fact mean it this time around. ‘What are you going to do? Stay in Vegas?’

‘No, think I’ll head home tomorrow.’

‘If you want to see a show, I can get free tickets to Celine Dion . . .’

Celine Dion?
‘Thanks. Think I’ll pass,’ I said. ‘I’m just gonna hang around the pit here at Bally’s, drink too much and lose all my money.’

There was a pause. I imagined a smile flickering briefly on Alabama’s lips.

‘Hey, if you’re ever in DC, look me up,’ I said.

‘I will, Vin . . . Bye.’

The call ended. I hooked the cell under my chin, retrieved from my wallet the card Sugar had given me. I dialed and an automated voice answered: ‘The number you have reached is not in service. Please check the number and dial again.’

I took the advice but got the same result. Sugar’s phone number was a dead end. Maybe it had never been connected. I hadn’t dialed it before now so I couldn’t be sure either way, not without getting official about it. I gave a mental shrug. Sugar didn’t strike me as the reliable type. Maybe that’s what she did – blew in, blew a lucky special agent when she could find one, and blew out. I went to the machine that turns Ben Franklin into Abe Lincolns, stuffed the wad of cash in my pocket and went off to play the slots via the bar for a single malt.

The Sleeping Beauties were calling me, those magical bells a seductive lure. The theme here was that Ms Beauty was waiting for Prince Charming to come along and roll a row of kisses so that she could be awakened from her slumber and, presumably, shower the lucky royal with riches. Those magic-dust twinkles I’d been hearing almost everywhere since I arrived greeted my bills as the slot gobbled them up.

I won fifty-five bucks and lost ninety. Maybe I wasn’t charming enough. It took me another six hours and a forgotten number of single malts to lose the four hundred I had in my pocket. I was hunting for a Ulysses S. Grant – I was sure I still had one on me – when fingers grabbed my arm and spun me around. It was Alabama, I think. I peered at her through my Glen Keith glasses. Yes, it was her. I recognized those red eyes.

‘Been looking for you. You’re drunk,’ she said.

‘An’ you’re Ala . . . Alababama,’ I slurred. ‘Whuz up?’

‘They found Randy.’

‘What time’s it?’ I squinted at my Seiko.

‘One in the morning. I got a call from your police friend a couple of hours ago. He left a message.’

I took out my cell, which had inadvertently been switched to mute. There were three missed calls, one from Bozey several hours ago and two recent ones from Alabama. There was also a text from the detective. I read the message.
Sweetwater fnd. Not good. Call me 2mara.

‘They want me to go to Australia and . . . and . . .’ She brought her hand to her face and cried behind it. I did my best to sober up while she got herself under control. ‘They want me to go and identify the remains.’

Remains
. Bozey was right – not good.

The news had sobered me up a little. She leaned forward against me. I put my arms around her, her face hot and wet against my neck, and rubbed her back gently. ‘Can you go?’ she asked.

‘Go where?’

‘I can’t do it. I don’t want to go; don’t want to see him. I’ll pay your expenses. Please, can you go?’

To Australia? ‘What about relatives, next of kin?’ I asked.

‘Randy didn’t have any. He was alone in the world.’ I felt her body shudder, wracked with mostly silent sobs.

So the guy was like me: no living relatives. That wasn’t so tragic, and there were advantages – no awkward Christmases, no irrelevant birthday presents to buy or receive or regift.

‘I want to remember him the way he was. You met him.
You
can sign the forms.’

I wasn’t so keen, and I wasn’t so sure my signature would be accepted, not being Randy’s spouse or next of kin. Did he have any tattoos or scars? And Darwin was halfway to the moon.

‘Please . . .’

I
went straight from Darwin International Airport to the office of the coroner, Jim Hunt, a big tired-looking guy with thick gray hair parted low on the side of his head. He wore tan Hush Puppies with knee-length off-white socks, brown dress shorts, a pink shirt and purple tie, and had a face that reminded me of one of those Chinese dogs with excess rolls of skin. He leaned forward in his chair and passed the photographs to me over his lunch, a large hamburger with enough cholesterol dripping from the bite he’d taken out of it to block a storm water drain. A blob of egg yolk had collected in a corner of his lips – a snack for later, maybe. The photos showed a couple of sharks lying on the heavy wooden slats of a pier, one two-thirds the size of the other, like it might be the larger one’s kid brother. Both had their undersides slit open from anus to chin. Spilling from the slits onto the slats were the sharks’ insides. Clearly visible in the larger one’s viscera was a human buttock and thigh, and among large sausages of guts pulled from the smaller one was a hand attached to an arm, the glint of a steel watchband on its wrist.

‘You’re a hundred percent sure you got Randy Sweetwater there?’ I asked, flicking through the photos. I didn’t know Randy well enough to positively identify his butt cheek.

‘When you get people in like this – as I’m sure you know, Mr Cooper – identification becomes a bit of a work in progress,’ Hunt answered. ‘Though, at the moment, there’s enough for me to at least
believe
that those bits and pieces there are your man. Had Randy Sweetwater’s wallet on him for starters. We’re waiting on a DNA profile and prints from the man’s former employer to make a positive ID.’ By ‘former employer’ he meant the USAF, where it was standard practice to keep DNA and fingerprints on file in the event that an aircrew ended up a smear.

‘In the meantime, you could provide us with an idea of his height and weight. Might as well start with the basics.’ He slid a pad and pen across the desk toward me. I jotted down my best estimate. Hunt opened a drawer and brought out a large brown envelope, which he upturned. A chrome pilot’s watch, a Breitling with a black face, slid out of the envelope onto the desk, along with a black leather wallet.

The watch’s second hand was working. I picked it up, turned it over and read the inscription,
Anything, Anywhere, Anytime
– it was the motto of the 17th Airlift Squadron, Randy’s outfit back when I’d met him. Now that I saw it up close, I remembered the watch being on his wrist back in Afghanistan – he’d just bought it and his co-pilot believed it was a fake. It was still ticking so maybe it was the genuine article after all. I opened the wallet. Through the plastic I could see the photo on a Nevada driver’s license. The face was blank, emotionless, but it was clearly Randy’s blank and emotionless face.

‘Bull sharks – buggers’ll eat anything,’ said Hunt. ‘Once found a steam iron and ironing board inside one of ’em. Only thing missing was the bloody Chinaman.’ He rewarded himself with a chuckle. ‘There’s only one thing more savage than a bull shark and that’s a salty.’

‘What’s a salty?’ I asked him.

‘Saltwater croc. Fucken sharks are good-natured compared to those bastards. That your bloke’s watch?’

I said I believed it was and explained the significance of the inscription.

‘Any tattoos, scars, birthmarks?’ Hunt asked.

‘He had a tattoo – Air Force wings. Here,’ I said, showing him the area, on the arm under the bicep. Unfortunately, that was one of the bits of Randy still missing.

Hunt took the photos of the remains, examined them at close range, picking a pair of glasses up off the table and putting a lens between his eye and the photo. ‘Let’s wait for the formal identification then, eh?’

‘What about getting a look at the wreckage?’

‘Yes, well, as I said on the phone when you called ahead, that might prove a bit difficult – it’s a fair way out in the bush. Anyway, Detective Inspector Grubb can fill you in on all that. And maybe after you’re done, you might like to join Grubby and me at the pub for a little ice-cold refreshment, eh?’

‘Sure,’ I said, standing. I’d come a long way on Alabama’s credit card, and I couldn’t exactly call it quits after a glance at a few photos and lunch with a head on it.

A fly buzzed around the burger. Hunt brushed it aside, eased himself up and out of his chair and held out a hand. ‘You know where you’re going?’

I remembered the address. ‘Seventy-one Smith Street.’

‘Just two minutes’ walk up the road, mate. That’s what we like about Darwin: everything’s just up the road – or down it.’

The formalities concluded, I picked up my bag and left.

Down on the street it seemed to me that the only folks going about their business in the growing mid-morning heat were seniors on electronic scooters and young moms pushing strollers. Take away those moms and I could have been somewhere in Florida in winter. The Aussies called Darwin a capital city but it felt more like a large Gulf vacation town to me. There were too many trees, the pace was too relaxed, and there weren’t enough frowns on the faces of the people walking around for this to qualify as a capital city.

Continuing the Gulf theme, Darwin’s shores were lapped by water, in this instance the Timor Sea, the ditch that kept Australia and Indonesia apart. It was also the final stretch of water over which Randy had had to fly before making landfall, having navigated a distance of roughly eighty-eight hundred miles. And that was Randy’s problem: ‘roughly’ wasn’t quite good enough. His flight plan set out a journey of 8823 miles – LA, Hawaii, Kiribati, the Solomons, Darwin – but he’d fallen short, apparently coming down in a remote shark-infested tributary 344 miles east of Darwin airport’s runway threshold markers.

I counted down the street numbers till I stood in front of Darwin police headquarters, 71 Smith Street, half a dozen stories of Lego prefab opposite a building that appeared to be a cross between a barn and a collection of large croquet hoops – the Darwin Memorial Uniting Church, so a sign said. I went into the police building, showed my ID to the security on the ground floor bench and was buzzed up to the office of Detective Inspector Gary Grubb.

A few minutes later, I came around a corridor corner to find myself beckoned into an office by a large guy with a red beard whose shorts were being pushed down off his hips by a fifty-five-gallon drum tucked under his shirt.

‘Cooper – you found us. This way, mate, this way . . .’ The hand that shook mine was the size of a clutch plate, and just as hard. The skin on his nose was pitted and pepperoni red. The guy had suffered badly from acne as a kid: a multitude of crescent-shaped depressions on his cheek and neck looked like someone had dug their nails repeatedly into his skin. I pulled out my credentials again; before I could show them, he clapped me on the back like we’d had some good times back in the day, and said, ‘Forget the fucken formalities, mate. You wouldn’t’a made it this far if you weren’t who you said you were. Jim called ahead. Problems with the remains, I hear – not enough of them for a formal ID.’

I went inside and put my bag on the floor. Grubb’s office was cooler than the corridor outside. Located on the corner of the floor, it was lit from two sides, the green waters of Darwin harbor clearly visible out the windows.

The phone on the desk rang. The DI picked it up and after a moment said, ‘Yeah, mate, send ’er up.’ He re-cradled the handset and excused himself. ‘Make yourself at home, mate. Got company.’ He stepped back out into the corridor, leaving the door ajar.

I took the opportunity to scope the office, get my bearings. On one wall was a gray pin board just like the ones back in my office and Bozey’s office, similarly covered in notes and printouts and mug shots of the usual resentful faces. Sharing the wall were large maps of the Northern Territory and the Darwin city area. Tucked into one corner was a personal collection of photos that mostly showed the DI on the back of a boat named
The Office
, holding up a variety of impressively huge fish by their silver gills. Among the images were shots of dead black hogs the size of horses, their tongues lolling in the dirt, small dogs with wide heads standing around the carcasses, grinning. The DI again featured prominently – him and his buddies, I guessed, leaning on the beasts, rifles in the crooks of elbows, grinning like the dogs. I looked closer and recognized Jim Hunt, the coroner, in several scenes.

‘Come in, come in. Join the party,’ I heard the DI say. The door swung open and a woman entered, the compact sparrow type: blonde shoulder-length hair parted a little off-center, maybe a hundred and fifteen pounds, fair skin, blue eyes, no makeup and around thirty years of age. She wore navy-blue slacks, a loose-fitting cream-colored shirt, flats on her feet: the churchgoer type. Maybe she was lost, looking for the building across the street. We shook. Her hand was tiny and clammy. The
nervous
churchgoer type.

‘Investigator Kim Petinski,’ she said, introducing herself. ‘US National Transportation Safety Board.’

That surprised me: the NTSB, here already? ‘Vin Cooper,’ I said.

The pause told me she was looking for more than a name, a hint DI Grubb also picked up on. ‘Mr Cooper’s here to identify the remains,’ he said, filling the gap.

‘Oh, so you’re related to the deceased?’ she asked, a blonde eyebrow just a little arched.

‘No. We served together.’

‘Don’t you have to be a relative for formal identification purposes?’

‘Friend of the family,’ I replied.

‘I thought the deceased had no family.’

When Petinski said ‘I’, it came out ‘ah’. ‘
Ah
thought the deceased had no family.’ A Texan, maybe, come straight from Houston. And on the way she’d done her homework, checked the records. She was looking at me, smiling a smile – if I wasn’t mistaken – that wanted to know why I was taking up her valuable time.

‘I’ve been asked to be here on behalf of Randy’s girlfriend,’ I informed her.

‘His girlfriend?’

‘Okay,
de facto
, if that helps.’

‘Would anyone like coffee or tea?’ Grubb asked.

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ said Petinski. I copied that.

Nothing to do, the DI shrugged and eased into the chair behind his desk, and let the conversation between Petinski and me continue.

‘So, you said you served together?’ Petinski asked.

‘Air Force.’

‘Of the United States?’

‘Who else’s?’

The woman smiled again. Seemed to me she did that when she wasn’t pleased. ‘You retired?’ she asked.

‘Nope.’

‘If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your unit?’

I was close to minding, not being a fan of the game of twenty questions unless I’m the one asking, but I played along for the sake of civility. ‘OSI.’

The investigator set her head on a tilt. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Cooper.’

‘Cooper . . . Cooper . . . Hey, I remember you.’

She had me at a disadvantage there. I couldn’t recall her at all, but I could have been drunk at the time.

‘Haven’t I read about you? Yeah, you were in the Congo with . . .’ she clicked her fingers to jog her memory, but it only wanted to be partially jogged, ‘. . . with those two entertainers. Didn’t you make some list in
People
magazine?’

Maybe I should start wearing sunglasses and a ball cap.

She turned to Grubb and said, ‘Y’know, Mr Cooper here is famous.’

‘Famous? Then you’d better bloody well sign something for me. How about those identification papers for Sweetwater’s remains?’ He chuckled politely, unsure about whether or not there was tension in the room that required relieving. I had to admit, I was wondering the same thing, the polite interrogation giving me the impression that I was somehow stepping on Ms Petinski’s petite toes.

‘You been to see the coroner?’ I asked her.

‘My next stop. You have, obviously.’

‘Yeah. I wouldn’t hurry. There’s not much to see, remains-wise.’

‘I’m actually more interested in surveying the wreckage. Speaking of which,’ she turned to Grubb, ‘we still good to go have a look at it, Inspector?’

‘Not a problem,’ he said, relieved that the pissing contest between the two foreigners in his office seemed to be over. ‘The fishermen who caught the sharks also found the wreckage.’

‘Can we drive there?’ she asked.

‘I wouldn’t recommend it.’ He got up out of his chair and went to the territory map. ‘Came down here, near Elcho Island. Mightn’t look far on the map but it’s around eight hundred kays or so.’ He tapped the spot. He was right, it didn’t look far at all – less than a couple of inches, max. ‘I’ve been contacted by the ATSB,’ the DI informed us. ‘They’ve got a team on the way, so they reckon.’

‘The ATSB?’ I asked.

‘Australian Transport Safety Bureau,’ Petinski said.

‘Local version of you?’

She nodded.

The DI was about to add something further when his phone rang again. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, lifting the receiver. ‘Detective Inspector Grubb. Yep . . . Uh-huh, uh-huh . . . No worries, give us ten minutes, eh?’ The crow’s-feet of his smile migrated north to become frown lines on his forehead. Looked like bad news. ‘Something’s come up,’ he said to Petinski and me, putting his hand over the mouthpiece.

*

Two unmarked police cruisers were already on the scene, as were two plain white vans and a vehicle with the word
CORONER
in large lettering down the side. Jim Hunt was talking to several men in blue undershirts, shorts and flip-flops, accompanied by a pair of khaki-uniformed police. A well-used blue and white fishing trawler with a rusting A-frame behind the superstructure was lashed against the concrete pier, pushing gently against half a dozen rubber sausages with the rhythm of the calm green sea.

DI Grubb parked behind the marked police car, and we all got out into the heat of bright tropical sunshine. Jim Hunt, hands on his hips, glanced over at us and gave his buddy a friendly nod. As we came closer, I could see a man and a woman in forensics overalls, as well as another male–female team from the coroner’s office – pathologists, probably – in the back of the trawler, all wearing rubber gloves on their hands. The female from forensics was taking photos.