Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,110

said, “she showed him the photos?”

“No,” Dan said. “But she told him what we found. I didn’t want to blindside the old guy. Shit, I don’t know . . . just got too much respect for what he did, okay? The old need-to-know-basis guys. Doesn’t matter the age, the training’s still there, and I can’t mislead a man like that.”

The photos we’d taken were not yet printed, but they were on Futch’s laptop: the tail fin of an Avenger, enough moss and mud cleaned away to show a number the old pilot would have recognized: a big white 11 stenciled portside on the tail, a 3 aft on the starboard side: Fort Lauderdale Torpedo Bomber 113. The same aircraft the man had posed with seventy years earlier.

For us, the discovery had been a disappointment, at first, but we’d rallied. We hadn’t found remnants of the iconic Flight 19, true. But what we’d found had played a role in the life of a man we hoped to meet.

Now even that seemed in jeopardy.

“We’ve got to play it by ear,” Dan continued. “It’s all up to Candice and the doctors—and Mr. Sampedro, of course. If they do let us in, we have twenty minutes, no more. Oh—something else. We aren’t allowed to record what he says, no photos either. Especially no photos. Not even notes. That comes from Mr. Sampedro himself, so nothing tricky, okay?”

For some reason Dan looked at Diemer when he said it. The Brazilian’s reaction was typically aloof. “He’s dying—a man of ninety years. What could it possibly matter what he tells us? Or even a few photos?”

Tomlinson and Diemer had spent the last two days treating each other with congenial indifference, but my pal now leveled a hard look at the man. “There are people who believe photographs snip away pieces of their spirit.”

Diemer countered, “Perhaps you’ve forgotten the photos of Lieutenant Sampedro as a young man.”

“People change—takes a while to figure out who they really are. It’s an individual choice, man. Doesn’t matter a man’s age. His spirit’s still in there, so we’ve got to respect that.”

The Brazilian muttered, “Silly superstition,” which Tomlinson talked over, saying, “It might help if I write the old gentleman a note. Let the granddaughter or a nurse take it in first. If he reads it and trusts us, then it’s his decision.” He looked around. “Any objections?”

Last night, by firelight, Tomlinson had played catch-up by going through photos he had yet to see, the old scalloped Kodaks of a young Lieutenant Angel Sampedro and his fellow aviators. Unlike me—Dan, too, probably—he had also plumbed the depths of the Sampedro family scrapbook, Christmas parties, dried flowers and all, often smiling at some fragment of the clan’s history. Obviously, he had felt a connection—but didn’t he always? I didn’t mind him sending a note, nor did Dan, but the Brazilian couldn’t resist commenting when Tomlinson folded the paper after only a second or two, pen in hand.

“So few words?” Diemer asked, amused. “Such eloquence!”

“Only two words,” Tomlinson replied, flicking a look at me. “We don’t want the old guy to kick off before he’s finished reading. Right?”

—

NOW WE WERE with the aviator, the four of us, sitting or standing next to a bed that cradled the remnants of what had been a decorated Avenger pilot, a cocky flyweight Latino in the old photos, his combat-ready smile replaced by translucent lips and a tremor.

“Is . . . she . . . gone?”

Tubes in his nose, needles taped to onionskin forearms, gray veins beneath, Mr. Sampedro had ordered his nurse, then his granddaughter, from the room—a surprise to all. There had been no debate because he had issued the orders by refueling his lungs with a breath after each word or two. Decades of Camels—a lethal war wound shared by his generation—had left the man only one other option: a voice synthesizer that vocalized his two-fingered typing. Sampedro, a proud man, had yet to risk humiliating himself.

“We brought pictures, sir. Would you like to see a few? The tail off an Avenger we uncovered yesterday. Torpedo bomber”—Dan hesitated—“well, like your granddaughter said, the ship was out of Lauderdale. The tail section is from a ship you might remember: Avenger number 113.”

Yes, the old man had been told, but Dan’s offer still caused one skeletal fist to clench while eyelids slammed tight—a reaction of sudden pain. But then Sampedro gathered himself, tapped the bed, and said, “Put . . . here. Glasses . . . damn