Authors: Patricia Cornwell
Dear Anonymous,
The bullet you say you fired at Moses missed. He was in the hospital because the road dogs beat and cut him up so badly. Did you beat on him, too? Or cut him?
Trooper Truth
Dear Trooper Truth,
No! All I did after trying to shoot him was help dump the punkins in the river. As for the cutting, that was Unique. I sure is glad that bullet missed! Maybe now I
can forgive myself and Hoss won’t be mad at me no more.
Andy was unclear about the Hoss reference and didn’t understand what Anonymous meant by the cutting’s being
Unique,
but he decided to take a risk.
Dear Anonymous,
Surely you must know that Hoss would want the road dogs caught so nobody else, including Popeye, is in harm’s way. I doubt very much that Hoss has been mad at you, because he would know that bullet missed Moses. Hoss knows everything. He’s possibly been disappointed in you for not turning in Smoke and the road dogs. Now is the time to make things right, and a place to start is to tell me how I can find Smoke and the other pirates without them figuring anything out. By doing so, you will be granted immunity in exchange for your assisting the police. And I think you know by now that I always tell the truth.
Trooper Truth
A reply landed in the mailbox moments later.
Dear Trooper Truth,
Go to the race and look for a pit crew with a Jolly Goodwrench flag. That’s us pirates. I’ll have Popeye and do my best to stay out of the way, but you should know that Cat been taking helichopper lessons from the state police and plans to fly all of us to Tangerine Island after Smoke kills a lot of people.
“Jesus,” Andy muttered as he stared at the message. There was only one state policeperson he could think of who might be giving anyone flying lessons right now, since the state police were so critically short of pilots at the moment. “Macovich. You stupid son of a bitch!” Andy said out loud. “What the hell are you doing?”
Macovich wasn’t a saint, but he wasn’t terribly bright, either, and Andy tried to work through Macovich’s motivation. He dug through his briefcase until he found the paperwork on the Bag Man case he had worked last year. He dialed Hooter Shook’s home phone number.
After much clunking and groping and coming to, Hooter groggily answered, “Hello?”
She assumed it was Macovich, who had been calling her a lot and stopping at her tollbooth, even when he didn’t need to. That man was sex-addicted, she angrily thought. She had never seen anything like it. Most men she dated for the first time gave her at least an hour or two to figure out whether she might be remotely interested in holding hands or digging tongues halfway down each other’s throats. But Macovich had kept grabbing at her under the table when they were drinking in that booth at Freckles. It was a shame, really. Hooter had liked him a fair amount when they’d chatted out by the traffic cones.
“I told you to quit calling me!” Hooter snapped over the line before Andy had a chance to say a word.
“I haven’t called you recently,” Andy replied. “Let me guess, you think this is Trooper Macovich.”
“Well, you don’t sound like him,” Hooter said, calming down.
“This is Trooper Truth,” Andy boldly said.
“Naw . . . You pulling my leg,” Hooter replied with suspicion. She didn’t recognize Andy’s voice because most white folk sounded the same to her. “Ain’t no way Trooper Truth be calling me.”
“Well, I am,” Andy said with confidence. “And the reason is because I need your help. It has come to my attention that you had drinks with Macovich at Freckles the other night.”
“Yeah. That was the night from hell, I tell you.”
“Did he take the check?”
“I didn’t see no check,” Hooter replied. “ ’Cause I left to get me some air in the alleyway, then this crazy man started trying to shoot his privates off . . .”
“Yes, I’m aware of that,” Andy politely interrupted her. “But I’m wondering if you ever saw Macovich pull out his wallet?”
“Uh-huh. He paid for each round, ’cause we was the only
Afric-Americans in there, and I’m assuming they didn’t trust us enough to start a tab.”
“I sincerely doubt that was the case,” Andy reassured her. “The people in Freckles aren’t like that, and it’s easy to assume the worst if you’ve ever been treated unfairly. Maybe Macovich didn’t ask for them to run a tab because he likes to flash his money, especially if he was trying to impress you.”
There was a pause on the line as Hooter pondered this.
“Well,” she finally conceded, “I guess you must be right, ’cause he sure was flashing his money, which I didn’t like a bit ’cause money’s just full of germs and he knew how I felt about it and then kept trying to grab at my legs under the table when we was drinking in the booth. But now that I think of it, I don’t remember his asking for a tab, so maybe you right and I was jumping to ’clusions. You know, I got people at the tollbooth who never say ‘Thank you’ or ‘Have a nice day,’ even after I say it first. And I just always assumed it’s ’cause of my nonwhite status.”
“Many people are simply rude and consumed with themselves,” Andy pointed out.
“Yeah, I guess that’s so,” Hooter said. She had softened considerably and seemed wide awake now. “But he did have money he was flashing around,” she added, returning to the subject of Macovich. “Now you gotta understand there was a lot of smoke in there, but he was flashing away and I caught a lot of twenties and at one point, what I could swear was a hundred-dollar bill, which I never seen in the Exact Change lane and ain’t never had in my entire life.”
So Macovich
was
giving Cat helicopter lessons and possibly being paid a hundred dollars in cash for each one. Macovich was probably doing this at night or off hours when he knew no one else would be at the state police hangar. Andy walked into the kitchen to check the time. It was a little past 1:00
A
.
M
. He dressed in civilian clothes, took his gun and portable radio, and went out to his car.
It was just as he’d suspected when he arrived at the airport. The Bell 430 was not inside the hangar, and there were what appeared to be fresh Salem Light cigarette butts all over the tarmac, even near the fuel truck. Andy switched his radio over to the state police aviation frequency.
“Four-three-zero-Sierra-Papa,” Andy said over the air.
Macovich was startled and unnerved when Andy’s voice filled his headset as Cat, dressed in NASCAR colors, tried to fly the helicopter level and steady in a pattern around the nearby Chesterfield airport.
“Thirty-Sierra-Papa,” Macovich replied, trying to sound innocent and busy.
“Who’s calling us?” Cat demanded to know.
“Stand by,” Macovich transmitted to Andy. “It’s the tower,” Macovich told Cat over the intercom because he didn’t want to make the same mistake of broadcasting what he was saying in private.
“Let me talk to ’em,” Cat said as he missed his approach. “I need to practice the radio.”
“Not now,” Macovich said through his mike. “You’re gonna have to do a flyover ’cause you was way too high for that approach, and I got a feeling the tower’s gotten a complaint about the way you’re flying, so the best thing is let me deal with them and you just take your headset off for a minute, ’cause it ain’t gonna be pleasant, whatever the tower’s got on its mind, I can tell you that! Don’t get so damn close to the fence! Pull it up to eight hundred feet and just fly the damn helicopter while I deal with this!”
Cat took off his headset and squinted through his Oakley sunglasses, trying to make out the very dark shape of trees looming ahead.
“Thirty-Sierra-Papa,” Macovich transmitted to Andy. “I’m busy right now.”
“Roger. I’m well aware of that,” Andy’s voice came back, and his tone boded that he knew exactly what Macovich was doing. “Your student is in violation,” Andy used aviation vernacular.
“What you mean?” Macovich was getting increasingly alarmed and pulled up on the collective to clear the trees, a reflex he scarcely noticed anymore because he had to fight for the controls routinely when giving this NASCAR dumbshit a lesson.
“Just inform your student that the tower needs you to return to the ground ASAP,” Andy ordered Macovich.
“Roger,” Macovich reluctantly replied, and he tapped Cat’s
headset, indicating for him to put it back on. “We gotta problem,” Macovich told Cat. “It’s my ship. Don’t make me tell you again to get your hands and feet off the controls! We got us a big mess with the FAA and I’m gonna have to deal with it so you don’t get in any trouble and we don’t end up grounded.”
“Shit!” Cat exclaimed. “The race! There better not be any fucking problem! The world-famous driver I work for ain’t gonna put up with no problem, and he’s good friends with the gov’ner and the president of the United States and will get your ass fired!”
“Don’t you worry,” Macovich said, speeding back to the Richmond airport. “I’ll handle it.”
T
HE
only thing that got handled was Cat, who within the hour was in the city lockup, crowded inside a dark cell full of inmates who kept telling each other to
shut up
and continued to go on and on about some puppy that had gotten flattened in a hit-and-run. Andy called Hammer the minute he got home. He informed her of everything that was going on, including the reassuring news that Popeye might be alive and would be rescued at the Winston Series race.
“That rotten snake,” she said of Macovich. “He can just turn in his gun and badge when he gets to headquarters. You call him and tell him to report to my office at eight sharp.”
“I respectfully disagree,” Andy said. “Smoke and the other road dogs don’t know Cat’s identity has been revealed and he’s now in jail.”
“And he’s also missing in action, as far as they’re concerned,” Hammer reminded him. “Don’t you think they’re going to be a bit suspicious when he doesn’t show up to fly them to the race?”
“I think I’ve got a way around that.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“I’ll fly the governor in a four-oh-seven and make sure he, Moses Custer, and whoever else, get safely in their box,” Andy laid out his plan. “And we’ll have at least twenty troopers and EPU in plain clothes strategically stationed. Macovich needs to fly Smoke and his road dogs as expected. Don’t worry, I’ll get it all arranged.”
“Balony, Andy!” Hammer wasn’t convinced. “There will probably be a hundred and fifty thousand fans at that damn race. Twenty troopers can’t begin to protect the governor and his guests and manage such a crowd if something bad goes down. The first shot fired and there will be a riot and people will get crushed in the stampede. Cars will run off the track and crash. It will be a terrible disaster, and I just don’t think we’re equipped to control it.
“And what if Tangier Island decides to be a problem, too? I don’t think anything will dissuade them of the ridiculous notion that NASCAR plans to take over their island, and a perfect time to launch some sort of hostile move on their part would be during the race,” she continued to paint negative scenarios. “We ought to have troopers posted on the island, too. Frankly, I wish you could write something in an essay that would convince those people to behave and settle down, but I doubt anyone on Tangier even has a computer.”
“I’ve received no communications from anybody on the island,” Andy informed her. “So you’re probably right. No one there is reading me. But based on all the satellite dishes I noticed, they certainly watch TV. So why not create a diversion on the island? I can plant something in my next essay that will end up being broadcast in the news before the race.”
He thought of Fonny Boy and the rusting piece of iron, and decided that nothing captured an Islander’s attention more than items of value that they feared outsiders might try to take from them. Andy began to write a carefully worded e-mail that instructed his anonymous pirate friend to leave his or her computer logged on to Trooper Truth and watch for the next essay. In addition, the anonymous pirate was to inform Smoke that Cat was busy
practicing autorotations
and getting his
check ride
and would meet them at Tangier Island after the race so he had time to do a
high recon
of the area and set up their new headquarters.
“Tell Smoke and the others that Cat got word of a huge stash of treasure, and his instructor was going to drop Cat off on the island early and would fly Smoke and the dogs to the race as planned, then whisk them to Tangier Island where Cat would already be out in a boat, securing the treasure before
anybody else found it,” Andy e-mailed the anonymous pirate. “Assuming Cat doesn’t have a computer or know how to use one, just say that the e-mail alerting them about all this came from the helicopter instructor, Trooper Macovich, who has decided to throw in his lot with you road dogs and be your pilot and get you guns and scuba gear, set up money laundering, and make runs to Canada and whatever else you need, in exchange for his being cut in on a modest share of the treasure.”
Possum was slightly confused and a little frightened when he got Trooper Truth’s latest communication, but he would do as he was instructed and leave the computer logged on to the website and pass on the information to Smoke. But Possum did have one final question: