Fatal Justice (Jack Lamburt #1)(34)
I didn’t acknowledge him, and he must have taken my silence as a sign that he was winning me over, so he went on.
“You know, you got some big balls, fella. I could use a guy like you in my operation. We could work things out between us, no hard feelings, and you’d be in for some big paydays. I don’t know what those KFC dicks pay you, but I can triple it, no problem.” He smiled again, this time a little wider, trying hard to win me over.
“You killed my dog.”
“What? Oh, that. You can’t blame me for that. I mean, come on, what a fuckin’ beast that dog was,” he laughed. “My life flashed before my eyes. I thought I was gonna crap in my pants. If you’re half as brave as him, you’ll fit in with my crew just fine. Besides, he was just a dog. You know they eat dogs in China, right?”
What an ass. I couldn’t show any emotion and give him the satisfaction of getting to me.
I cleared my throat and composed myself.
“It’s too bad. Sally was really attached to London. She’s gonna be very upset when I tell her that you killed him.”
His mouth opened and I could see him staring at me through the corner of my eye. I ignored him. Shithead.
I checked my GPS for the third time to confirm that we were on the east side of Jeffrey’s Ledge.
“We. Are. Heeere!” I announced, doing my best to sound like an MMA announcer. I looked over at Big Sam and laughed. The wrinkled forehead look of confusion on his face was priceless. I wanted to snap a photo and post it on Facebook so bad, but for once, I was successful in controlling my impulses.
“Here? What the hell you talking about, here? We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.” He turned in his seat and looked all around us. “I can’t even see a light anywhere.”
I reached over, undid his seat belt, and unlocked his door.
“What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?” The panic in his crackling voice rose with each word and reached an octave that I’d never heard from a postpubescent male. So much for the tough guy mobster lore.
“I’ll tell Sally you said hi.” I turned the yoke hard to the right and, the little Cessna went into a steep bank. I placed my hand on his hip and helped “Big Sam” slide out the door, his greasy hair an unexpected aid to his exit. Good riddance.
Even over the roar of the three-hundred horsepower engine, I could hear him screaming on his way down to the Atlantic Ocean.
I leveled off the small plane, leaned over, and pulled his door shut. I shivered and goose bumps rose on my neck. Holy crap, it was freaking cold at this altitude. I looked up at my outside air temperature gauge that hung on the top of my windshield next to my compass and saw that it was in the low teens.
Did I mention that I love math? I mentally calculated the wind-chill factor for a falling body, which is 35.74 + 0.6215T ? 35.75V ^ 0.16 + 0.4275TaV × 0.16.
Wow. Minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Holy shit, that’s cold!
No wonder he was screaming.
To give the radar watchers in the air traffic control room an appearance of a normal flight, I continued flying south along Victor 167, a highway in the sky that runs from Maine to Cape Code, for another fifteen miles before punching in the GPS coordinates to my home airport and turning westbound.
I climbed up to four thousand five hundred feet, which was an appropriate altitude for west bound flight, and engaged the autopilot. I reached behind me and grabbed my thermos of coffee that Debbie had made me. She always made the best coffee, and even after a couple of hours my Thermos brand travel mug kept my Colombian dark roast toasty hot. That coffee was a godsend.
It was late, I’d been up for a long time, and I still had a ways to go. With winds aloft, I had at least another hour of flying before I reached my private airstrip in Eminence. This time Debbie would be waiting up for me.
On the ride home, I had plenty of time to think about what had transpired over the last few days and how I’d handled the situation. True, I had done some bad things, but nobody was perfect. Under the circumstances, my behavior could be excused. Right?
Perhaps, but that didn’t stop the feeling of remorse that swept through me.
What kind of man had I become? Telling lies about another man’s wife? Jeez, I should have never done that. Words hurt. I vowed never to do that again. I prayed for forgiveness and hoped that karma wouldn’t come back and haunt me for saying those terrible things about Sally.
I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes to touchdown in Eminence. By now, “Big Sam” would have splashed down and sunk to the bottom, and he’d be rolling down the sloped sea floor from Jeffrey’s Ledge to his final resting place in Wilkinson Basin. When he reached bottom, he’d be under nine hundred feet of ocean, his galvanized chains securing him to the seabed to feed the critters forever.
35
Debbie and I sat at our cozy table for two by the fireplace in the Lakeview House lounge. Soft rock music played in the background, and we ogled each other over joined hands like lovesick teenagers. I raised up my frosty beer mug, clinked it softly against her wineglass, and smiled harder than I had in a long time.
We had been sharing a room here since yesterday. We were checking out tomorrow, and I was sure I’d remember this stay for the rest of my life. Eating, drinking, and great sex. She slid one hand under the table and walked it up my thigh, then looked at me with a sly grin.