Thanks and good luck, Trooper Brazil

He logged off and put on his uniform, and within the hour was parking at Ruth's Chris Steak House on the city's south side, where he met Trooper Macovich, who had piloted the First Family in for dinner. The two of them sat in Andy's car and watched the steak house's front door, waiting for the governor to emerge.

"What's it like flying them?" Andy asked as he gazed out at the gleaming Bell 430 helicopter that was painted gun metal gray with dark blue stripes down the sides and the seal of the Commonwealth on the doors.

"Wooo, I can tell you for a fact, it ain't all it's cracked up to be," Macovich replied. "Just a damn good thing the guv didn't recognize me when I flew them here, 'cause I thought for sure that ugly daughter of his was gonna say something about playing pool and then the cat sure would be outta the bag. But she was too busy getting into the snacks in that little drawer under the backseat, you know? I sure do hope she don't say nothing when they come out, though." Macovich lit a Salem Light and turned his dark glasses on Andy. "So now that we're sitting here man-to-man, how 'bout you tell me what you did to get into so much trouble. I mean, everybody's wondering why Hammer put you on the bricks for an entire year."

"Who said I was put on the bricks?" Andy asked with a touch of defensiveness.

"Everybody say so. The word on the street is you got in big trouble for something or maybe had a fight with Hammer."

"I was getting my pilot's license and several additional ratings."

"I know it didn't take you no forty hours a week for a whole year to learn how to fly. And your ratings took what? Maybe two, three weeks each? So what was you doing the rest of the time? Just running women and watching TV?"

"Maybe."

"You gonna tell me what you did to get suspended?" Macovich persisted.

"No," Andy said sullenly, deciding he might as well allow the rumor to persist because no one, including Macovich, could know the truth about Trooper Truth.

"Well, no one would guess you'd have a messed-up life. Anybody looking at you would think you're the happiest son of a bitch in town," Macovich added with a prick of jealousy.

"We need new pilots." Andy changed the subject. "Right now, you and I are the only ones left."

Macovich followed Andy's gaze outside to the big helicopter and began to entertain a suspicion.

"I bet you want to fly the governor," Macovich accused him from behind a cloud of smoke.

"Why not? Seems to me you could use a hand," Andy nonchalantly replied as he instantly decided to approach the governor on the matter. "The First Family certainly ought to have more than one pilot, and what the hell do you do when it's not VFR conditions?" he added, referring to Visual Flight Rules, which meant that weather conditions were good enough to fly by sight instead of instruments.

"Find some excuse for why the helicopter can't take him wherever it is he wants to go," Macovich replied. "I usually tell him there's a maintenance problem or radar's down."

"You've got a four-thirty and you only fly in pretty weather?" Andy couldn't believe it. "That thing was made to fly through clouds. Why do you think it's got auto-pilot, IIDS, and EPHIS? Not to mention that smooth-as-silk rotor system. Hell, you could roll that bird like an F-sixteen. Not that I'm recommending it," Andy was quick to add, since it was illegal to perform acrobatics in a helicopter. "But I have to admit, I did roll it on the simulator down in Fort Worth when I was at the Bell Training School. Slowed down to about a hundred knots, pointed the nose down at two thousand feet, pushed the cyclic all the way to the right, and around I went."

The idea of being upside down in a helicopter gave Macovich a bad reaction and he inhaled as much smoke as he could to calm his nerves. "You one crazy ass," he said. "No wonder you got suspended. Unless"-it suddenly occurred to Macovich-"you really wasn't suspended but are up to something. On some secret project. Wooo!"

"Speaking of secrets," Andy artfully dodged and deflected, "I wonder who Trooper Truth is."

"Yeah, well, you ain't the only one," Macovich replied. "The governor wants to know something fierce, and he's ordered me to figure it out. So if you got any ideas, I sure would 'predate your passing them on."

Andy didn't reply.

"I'm curious, myself," Macovich went on. "How'd he know about Tangier Island and what we was doing out there, huh? I read all about it in one of his columns on that web of his. It's like he was there watching the whole thing."

Andy said nothing, because he did not want to lie. Macovich turned his dark glasses on him as yet another suspicion hovered over his thoughts.

"You ain't Trooper Truth, are you?" Macovich pressed him." 'Cause if you are, I promise to keep it a secret, long as you understand I got to tell the governor."

"Listen, what makes you think I wouldn't tell the governor myself if I knew who Trooper Truth was?" Andy sidestepped the question.

"Hmmm. I guess that's a good point. If you knew, you would tell him and take all the credit," Macovich considered.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Then who you think it is? I know it's passed through my mind that maybe Major Trader's doing it."

"Not hardly," Andy said. "Trader can't tell the truth. So he couldn't possibly be Trooper Truth, now could he?"

"You're probably right." Macovich blew out a cloud of smoke. "You also right about us being short of pilots."

"Why do they keep quitting?" Andy wanted to know.

Macovich decided he had said enough. He was already in trouble with the First Family. No point in making matters worse, and he was worried that Andy might prove to be a threat to him. That white boy sure was smart-a lot smarter than Macovich. Andy didn't even have to think hard about anything before he made a comment, and sometimes he used words that Macovich didn't know.

"So, I bet when you was in school, you was one of those bookworms," Macovich said as envy crept into his tone and compelled him to find a way to put Andy down. "Bet you lived in the library and all you did was study."

"Hell, no. I never studied," Andy said, not adding that he had sailed through college in three years and loved learning so much that he never considered his school-work studying. "All I wanted to do was get out and get on with things."

"Yeah, no shit." The cloud of smoke nodded.

Machovich had suffered through one year of a technical college where he grew to strongly resent his father's ambition that his eldest son would one day hold down a respectable job at Ethyl Corporation, making solvents. Macovich moved out of the house his freshman year and joined the Army, where he learned to fly helicopters, and then moved on to law enforcement. A couple months back, he gave his father a framed autographed picture of the First Family, just to rub it in a little bit. Mrs. Crimm had written a nice personal inscription on it that said, "First Lady Maude Crimm."

A cigarette butt sailed in a perfect arc and landed on the pavement, where it glowered like an angry eye.

"All I gotta do is say one word to the guv about you flying as my co-pilot and he take care of you," Macovich bragged without the slightest intention of facilitating helicopter flying or anything else for Andy-except trouble, maybe. "That's assuming he don't remember me. Now if that pool shark daughter decides to make a fuss, then I might be best off speaking to him another time. Wooo, I'd better light up quick before they come out."

For a brief instant, the smoke cleared enough for Andy to remember that Thorlo Macovich was the biggest black male he had ever met.

"Now, it ain't the guv who mind people smoking." Macovich lit another menthol cigarette. "But the First Lady-wooo."The smoke shook its head." 'Member that interview she did in the paper the other Sunday on tertiary smoke? I mean, how?" The cloud of smoke went on and on. "What? I inhale, then I blow it in your mouth, then you hurry and locate a third party and blow it in their mouth?"