We Will Be Crashing Shortly (18 page)

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time agonizing over the mystery myself. It was a particular sore spot with me, because I’d known two of the flight attendants onboard the plane.

The intercom crackled to life. “We’re third in line. Prepare the cabin for takeoff,” the pilot instructed. We had about ten minutes before we were in the air. LaVonda hooted fearfully and did a scaled-down version of her back-and-forth panic dance. Then, out of habit, she sat in the jumpseat and buckled up. Malcolm, who had made it back from behind the bulkhead with Beefheart, eyed her with amused curiosity.

“We need to get upstairs,” Flo moved toward the elevators, then stopped and turned back to us. “I mean all of us. You can’t stay down here during takeoff. It’s dangerous.”

She was right; the jumpseats located in the lower galley were there for inflight only, not for takeoff. We’d have to go upstairs and take passenger seats. Flo sensed my nervousness. “There’s only a few people up there,” she said. “They’ll never know you’re onboard.” She dowsed her cigarette in the galley sink, adding, “Probably.”

I shrugged. An L-1011 was the length of two city blocks. Things commonly occurred at one end of the plane that remained completely unknown to the people at the other. Especially when the engines were running, because the engines drowned out all other sounds. Recently while a flight to Dallas sat on the runway waiting for takeoff, a passenger near the last row mistook the air-conditioning condensation as smoke coming from the vents and tried to incite a panicked spontaneous evacuation of the aircraft. It took ten minutes for the flight attendants in back to get the passengers to stop screaming, while those in first class, with their earphones, cocktails, and complete lack of situational awareness, had no idea anything unusual was happening behind them.

We lined up to ride up to the passenger cabin. Flo and Malcom first, next me and Officer Ned, then Otis and LaVonda. It was a lumbering process and I debated just climbing up through the escape hatch that opened into the passenger aisle above, but decided that might draw attention. As a general rule I considered attention to be bad, believe me. I missed the days up until last year when I could sail through airport security and customs wearing a tiara made out of pipe bombs if I wanted. But those days ended when I became a public piñata in the news. Now it felt like I could barely walk to the drugstore without a SWAT team swarming down.

As Flo stepped into the elevator with Malcolm I heard LaVonda ask, “Wait, that was Morse code, right? On the phone earlier?”

Flo looked at her like she was nuts. “Are you nuts? I was making a batch of Bloody Marys.” As if to emphasize her point, she produced a flask from her apron pocket and took a swig.

Officer Ned said, “But the
MacGyver
reference, that was to let us know your phone was tapped, right?”

Flo shook her head and took another swig. “Amateurs,” she said. “Tell ’em, Crash.”

I had no idea. Flo closed the elevator door before I could get her to clarify. The
MacGyver
episode in question differed from most in that it didn’t deal with overt espionage, but a family-law situation in which a boy had been kidnapped by his noncustodial father. Turned out the father was the nephew of a crime boss and, you know, hijinks ensued.

Flo sent the elevator back down for Officer Ned and me, but he was too big and tall to fit in with me, so I entered it alone, flipped the toggle switches, and began my ascent. It was actually one of my favorites, that
MacGyver
episode. The father was a narcissistic wonk who only wanted the child for selfish reasons. Given my history with Ash, I could totally relate. When I was a kid he used to insist my mother bid for long overnight trips just so he could leave me locked in the house while he partied with his friends. I remember the neighbors once sent the police over after hearing me cry all night, only to have Ash return in time to intercept them at the door and convince them that the college sophomore in the car with him was actually my babysitter and there was nothing to worry about. In the
MacGyver
episode Flo mentioned, the crime boss character provided an interesting twist, because he ended up having a change of heart and siding with the mother.

This was on my mind as I exited the lift and stepped into the midgalley of the L-1011. I opened the door to see Anita standing there in a flight attendant uniform.
Anita! Why is Anita here?
I was actually happy to see her, but before I could cry out in surprise, she crossed the galley in two quick steps and angrily punched me in the face.

“Ouch! What the . . .” I grabbed my jaw, stumbled backward, and felt for a jumpseat to sit down. I sat in a passenger seat instead. The jet accelerated down the runway. Free of the weight of passengers, it lifted into the air almost immediately. The floor pitched. Anita stumbled after me and raised her hand to hit me again. I looked up in shock. It did not even occur to me to strike back.

“That’s enough, Teddy,” Molly Hackman told her.
Teddy?
“I don’t want her dead just yet. Take her to the midcabin with the others.” In her hand Molly cupped the gun I’d used to shoot her husband, the one I gave Flo before I went into hiding.

Most people have the assumption that a firearm can’t be dispatched in an airplane cabin without causing an explosive decompression. But that assumption is an exaggeration. Most of the time the bullet would just lodge itself in something in the interior of the plane—a seat, meal cart, bulkhead,
body
. If this happened, of course, the cabin air would not be compromised because there’d be no damage to the skin of the fuselage. Now if the bullet actually pierced the aluminum skin, there would of course be cause for alarm, but no reason for panic, per se, because modern jets are built to withstand this level of damage. The hole would create a small leak, but the pressurization system was designed to compensate for it. Even a few holes like this would have no effect on the integrity of the aircraft.

But if the bullet blew out part of the structure, that would be a problem. Damage like that could cause a domino effect leading, in seconds, to a catastrophic depressurization. Consider that Aloha Airlines flight that turned into a midair convertible in 1988 because of “metal fatigue”—a crevice in the plane’s aluminum skin corroded over time until it created enough friction to rip the roof off the plane midflight. Astoundingly only one person died in that accident—a flight attendant, of course. If only she’d been strapped in, she would not have been caught up in the debris that got sucked out of the opening.

The plane leveled and Anita yanked me to my feet. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she whispered to me as she made a big show of shoving me around. “Just act scared, okay? And I’m sorry!” I was so relieved this was an act—that she hadn’t turned bad after all—that I immediately forgave her despite the stinging in my jaw.

“What’s with the ‘Teddy’ business?” I asked. She hushed me and shoved me into a seat next to Flo. Officer Ned, who had come up in the elevator after me, was directed by Molly’s gun to take the seat across the aisle from us. Molly handed Anita the zip-tie handcuffs from the cockpit flight kit and instructed her to bind our wrists. All cockpit flight kits contained four sets of these handcuffs for the purpose of neutralizing unruly passengers should the occasion arise. Unlike normal zip-ties, which are easy to pop free from, if you ask me, these plastic cuffs were super thick and made specifically to subdue people. In her zeal to appear authentically henchman-like, Anita pulled the zip-ties really tight around our wrists. There was one left over, which Molly told her to use to bind Officer Ned’s ankles together.

Malcolm sat up front in the first row behind the cockpit. Otis and LaVonda had not come up from the galley. In fact, LaVonda may well have been stuck in the jumpseat below again. I noticed the badge clipped to Anita’s pocket flap. “Teddy LaVista,” it read. I turned to Flo.

“That’s the badge Otis gave you in the parking lot!” I whispered.

“I told you, they never look.”

I’ll say, the only thing Anita had in common with the man in the badge was that she was also African American. Flo explained to me that she figured out the real Teddy LaVista was part of Hackman’s smuggling ring, a person Molly only knew as a name on a list Hackman had made and magnetized to their refrigerator. When Molly escorted Flo back to her house to collect her uniform, they’d found Anita there sitting on the stoop, holding Trixi. The only way Flo could keep Molly from turning Anita into another dead smuggling mule was to slip Anita the badge and introduce her as “my roommate, Teddy LaVista, who lost her key again.”

It probably helped that the name “Teddy” could be loosely construed as a girl’s name, and, again, Anita was holding Trixi at the time. Molly, it turned out, had known that Mr. Colgate fed the button containing the microprocessor to her dog—that much Hackman had been able to get out of him before torturing him to death—and was so elated to be reunited with Trixi that she credited Anita with the pup’s return. Before long, Anita was getting outfitted into a spare uniform and listening to hushed instructions from Flo to act tough.

“What does this have to do with the clue you dropped about the
MacGyver
episode?” Officer Ned whispered, exasperated.

Flo lit a cigarette, barely encumbered by her bound wrists. “You two never understand my
MacGyver
references. I’m way over your heads.”

Molly stood nearby, assuring we saw the gun in her hand. She carried a large Nike rucksack on her back. She approached us and snapped the cigarette from Flo’s fingers. Rather than snuff it out on the carpet like I expected her to do, she started smoking it herself. Flo grumbled and unwrapped a stick of gum.

“You can’t point the gun at all of us,” Officer Ned challenged her.

“You’re right,” she agreed, “but one of you will do.” She aimed the gun at my head.

“Molly . . .” I began.

“Not a word from you.” She took another drag from the cigarette, furious. “It’s like a cloud of chaos follows you wherever you go. You would not believe the cleanup I’ve had to perform since yesterday.”

I held my tongue. The most pressing question in my mind, I’m ashamed to say, had to do with her newly minted double-D cups, not to mention the fresh platinum Betty Boop hairdo. Today she looked less like a Waffle House waitress and more like a Las Vegas cocktail waitress. Molly saw where I was staring and read my mind. “Costa Rican plastic surgery.” She smiled. “Part of the perks of being married to a crooked airline mechanic—free travel and all the implants you want.”

“Not to mention liposuction,” mumbled Flo. Molly shot her a look that shut her up.

“Do you see that boy up there?” she pointed toward Malcolm in the front cabin. “He’ll do anything I ask. He’s devoted to me. And why wouldn’t he be?” Her face turned sarcastic. “The poor kid—a father who didn’t love him enough to confess where he kept the money he stole, a mother who ran off and can’t be bothered to answer the phone.”

Here she was really hitting a nerve with me. Malcolm and I had been best friends since our days as unaccompanied minors, crisscrossing the coasts to accommodate the custody schedules of parents who seemed more concerned with sticking it to each other than the welfare of their kids. We had been through so much together, Malcolm and I, that I considered him an essential part of my life. Lately, as this business about his father’s fraudulent actions hit the fan—the indictment, the media, the
shame
—Malcolm had begun to spend more and more time with me and Flo. We were careful to never mention the indictment and strived to create a safe emotional haven for him, but still he seemed to retreat emotionally, sometimes to the point where he would simply sit with us, staring blankly for hours. I could always bring him around, though. Sometimes it took awhile, but eventually I could bring him back. Now here this horrible woman had taken advantage of Malcolm’s fragile state and gotten her hooks in him. I fumed visibly. If anything happened to Malcolm . . . I just . . . I don’t know what I’d do. I had a hard time breathing just thinking about it. I mean,
his own mother
couldn’t be bothered to . . .

Suddenly it occurred to me where Malcolm’s mother was.

“That’s Mrs. Colgate in the hospital, isn’t it?” I seethed, but I already knew the answer. Same size and general physique of the former Molly, and a face beaten into an unrecognizable pulp. How convenient that all you had to do to name a comatose assault victim was to have the next of kin identify the person. In this case Hackman probably simply told the ER personnel that the woman was his wife. Bing bang boom. Instant life-insurance settlement, but for one small snag.

“Damn you.” Molly glared at me. I see why she was mad; if I hadn’t kept Hackman from pulling the plug at the hospital, they’d be half a million richer right now. Instead, my friend Alby was now the legal guardian of Molly, or actually the unfortunate Mrs. Colgate, whom Hackman had chosen to be Molly’s stunt double.

The flight deck opened and Ash made it halfway down the aisle before he saw me and Officer Ned, then he did a swift 180 back to the cockpit, where he furtively knocked on the door, asking to be let back in.

“Just one question,” I implored Molly. She shrugged and took another hit off of the cigarette she’d appropriated from Flo.

“Why the Waffle House?” I asked. “I mean, of all places.”

“I was wondering that, too,” Flo said.

Molly exhaled. “Malcolm’s dad was a big fan. We had him staked out as a mark for months, and we noticed that he stopped in there on his way in and out of town, like clockwork. Turns out he had a thing for Waffle House waitresses.” Flo and I snorted. Molly glowered at us. “What’s so funny? It happens.”

On second thought it made sense. There were countless websites devoted to stewardess fetishes, why not waitresses? Both professions trained them to be subservient, right? And then over time some wire snaps in their head and they become “sassy” instead. I theorized this was why Flo collected ex-husbands like postage stamps. She seemed to have the same Jedi mind-trick effect over gentlemen that Otis had over women. Play it right and it’s like a super power. I bet a Waffle House waitress fetish wasn’t that uncommon.