for sure, I’m not going to miss living like this,” Mary said, looking up from her camp chair. “A real roof over my head, not canvas and grass.”
Dare did a deep knee bend; then, both arms outstretched, he opened and closed his hands. “Y’all are gonna be in tall cotton.”
“You really think so?”
“Well, I don’t really know. Never picked cotton myself.”
“You-all know what I’m sayin’,” she mimicked. “You’re sure we can still do it?”
He repeated the knee bend and the flexing of his hands, trying to assure himself that the growing rigidity in them was not rheumatoid arthritis. Then he got his notebook, opened it to a page of figures, and stood over her. “We been over this before, but let’s do it again. Here’s what we netted from Yellowbird, here’s what we’ll get for the Hawker—”
“If the guy buys it,” she interrupted.
“If he doesn’t, someone else will. Here’s what you got saved from when you were flyin’ before Yellowbird, here’s what we’ll need to put down on a loan for a Gulfstream Two, and here’s what’s left over. Ain’t what I hoped for, but a pretty good stake.” He leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. “Thanks for stickin’ with me. I sure did screw up. Saw that scam with the company shores comin’ a long time ago, but that hustle with the airplane—I did not see that a’ tall.”
And the injury to his pride still stung, almost as deeply as the loss of the money. He hated to think of himself as an easy mark, but that’s what he had been. His one consolation, and it wasn’t much, was that he’d been swindled by a master like Adid. Had snot-nose Doug been the author instead of the accomplice, Dare could not have looked himself in the mirror.
“No one could have seen it coming,” Mary said. “Who would have thought Doug would do this to you?”
“Wasn’t much point to bustin’ his nose, but damn, it sure did feel good. Enough of this talk. How about a dancin’ lesson? If you’re gonna live in Texas, you’ve got to learn the Texas two-step.”
He put a tape in the cassette player, and out came the voice like no other, heartbreaking, clear, every note flawless and true. Poor Patsy Cline, another singer doomed to die in a plane crash. Holding Mary close, he led her around the small space in the front of the tent. “The woman goes backward, the man forward,” he said. “One-two back, one-two back, then turn, one-two . . . All there is to it.”
She laughed. “Except a two-step is out of step to this song. It’s too slow.”
“Don’t matter.” He drew her to him, his left hand in her right, his opposite arm around her waist, and sang along.
“Too slow and too damned sad,” Mary insisted. “Find something that doesn’t sound like an empty bar at three A.M.”
He ejected Patsy Cline. While he rummaged in his cassette organizer—an empty cooking-oil tin—he heard someone approaching the tent. Footsteps in the mud, the squeak of a wet shoe on the shelter’s cement floor. Mary looked at him, not alarmed but alert. Tony Bollichek, the man who forgot everything and learned nothing, including the lesson Dare imparted with a beer pitcher, had been harassing her. He had plenty of opportunity, now that he was operating out of Dogpatch for some outfit called Busy Beaver—Yellowbird’s successor, Dare and Mary surmised—and shared the same hangar with them. Whenever Dare wasn’t near, Tony whined and pleaded for her to come back to him, or whispered obscenities, or made threats—depending on the state of his brain chemistry at the moment. Dare had warned him that if he continued, he would suffer another skull fracture and if he ever laid a hand on her, more serious damage. “I’m going to take that seriously,” Tony had replied, “so watch your back, mate.”
“Who the hell is it?” Dare called to the person outside.
A female voice answered. “I’m looking for Captain Dare. Do I have the right address?”
He opened the flap. The woman, in a hooded slicker, was standing under the eave formed by the makuti roof. She extended a hand with chicken-claw fingers. “Hi. Phyllis Rappaport. Sorry for showing up at this hour, but I couldn’t find you earlier. I’m with CNN. May I come in?”
Without waiting for an answer, she stepped inside and removed the hood, releasing a mass of flame-colored hair.
“Another red-headed stepchild,” Dare said, rubbing his rusty curls. “Y’all been lookin’ for me