I padded barefoot back to the car, the asphalt of the parking lot much warmer than the sand. I brushed the sand off my feet and pant cuffs. I put my shoes back on, then sat looking out at the water a little while longer. On this side of the pier, surfers had been riding waves since just before daybreak. I checked my rearview mirror and looked around. No one watching, as far as I could tell. I started up the car. No bomb under the hood. Whoever was trying to kill me had missed a golden opportunity. Not even that kind of thinking could disturb me much as I drove back to Lydia’s.

24

PETE CAME BY to pick me up just after Lydia had left for work. It was only about a fifteen-minute drive from Lydia’s place to the Las Piernas Airport. The airport was built in the late 1930s and it has a certain appeal because of it. The architecture has the curving chrome, brass, and green-glass look of the time. It’s small, just six gates. Only three major carriers use the Las Piernas Airport, but between them and the smaller airlines we get pretty good service and a hell of a lot less hassle than LAX. I don’t even think I’ve ever seen a Hare Krishna recruiter there.

Our flight was on American Southwest Airlines. We pulled out our plastic and paid for our tickets. Pete checked his gun in with security; they put it in a special box for the flight. We walked about forty feet to the gate and had a seat. Pete offered me a piece of gum.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“I gotta have gum before a flight. I quit smoking fifteen years ago, but every time I get near an airplane I want to light up so bad, I can’t stand it.”

“Gum’s easier on your lungs.”

“Yeah, no kidding. You ever been a smoker?”

“Never really was a smoker. As a kid I tried it a couple of times-never really learned how to inhale. Thought I looked pretty cool just carrying one around, but the charm of that wore off fairly quickly.”

“Yeah, well, you’re lucky. Took longer for the charm to wear off for me. Now I’ve got what they call the zeal of the convert-I hate being around it, you know? But not when I’m in an airport-then it’s all I can do not to go into the bar and buy a pack of cigarettes. It’s crazy.”

“You afraid of flying?”

His cheeks colored. “Naw, I wouldn’t say that.” But after a moment he added, “I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah, I guess it does make me nervous.”

“I won’t tell a soul, Pete,” I said.

“Thanks.”

By the time they called our flight he had gone through half a large pack of Big Red Chewing Gum. He smelled like a cinnamon stick. I still preferred it to the smell of smoke. I stood up and started for the gate. He grabbed my arm.

“Not yet,” he said.

“You’re not going to completely balk at getting on the plane, are you?”

“We’re in no rush. I’d just prefer we let everybody else get to their seats. We don’t have any luggage or anything to put in an overhead compartment.”

I sat down again. I wondered if Pete was nervous about flying with one of Las Piernas’s leading targets.

Although they were supposedly boarding by sections, it seemed like most people just got on as soon as they could. Phoenix is a hub for American Southwest, so the flight was almost full. They got to the final boarding call. Pete looked around in the waiting area and didn’t seem to find anything out of the ordinary. We walked down the ramp and on to the plane.

People were still standing up in the aisle, trying to shove impossible amounts of carry-on baggage into the overhead compartments. Eventually we made our way back to our seats. Pete asked me to take the window seat, and he sat in between me and a kid who looked to be about sixteen.

The kid was dressed for effect. Except for his Day-Glo green shoelaces and a bleeding-skull-and-crossbones necklace that looked as if it came out of a gumball machine, he wore a basic black outfit, complete with knee-length jacket. He was listening to a radio whose earphones were smaller than his earrings. He had one of those haircuts that was what we used to call a “butch” on one side of his head, but from his crown forward was straight and about chin length. I wondered if a person could wear that haircut and feel in balance at all times. I admonished myself for this kind of thinking, remembering the guy I dated in high school whose hair was twice as long as my own, and how loudly I protested over my parents’ narrow-minded reaction to him.

The kid caught me looking at him. I smiled and said, “Hi.” Apparently reading my lips, he flashed me a peace sign. I think it’s still a peace sign.

Pete looked at me and rolled his eyes.

One more passenger came on board, a tall, thin man with hollow cheeks. He had hard, piercing eyes that roamed over the faces of the passengers as he walked down the aisle. He moved just past our row and sat down right behind Pete. I could think of no specific reason to feel uneasy about this man, but we had failed to be the last ones on board and I couldn’t help but wonder about the way the man had looked over the passengers.

I felt my palms break out in a sweat. There were only a few open seats left on the plane. Had he just been looking for an empty seat? No, he was looking at people, not just scanning the rows for an available place. Then I noticed that he had passed up one of the ones closer to the door.

Why sit right behind us? Was that his assigned seat, or did he just choose that seat on his own?

“Got any more of that gum?” I asked Pete.

“Sure,” he said, offering me a stick, and then holding one out to the kid.

“Thank you, sir, that’s very kind of you,” the kid said politely.

I know we both looked slack-jawed. I don’t know why. The hippie I dated in high school was the most well-mannered of any of the handful of guys I went out with.

We started down the runway and I saw Pete’s knuckles go white. I thought about how odd it was-here was a guy who could handle resuscitating a bloody man who was buried alive in sand, but he was scared silly by an airplane’s takeoff. For my part, few sensations were better than the rush of being airborne.

It was a short flight. They barely had enough time to hand out peanuts and drinks before we landed. Pete seemed to be bothered even more by landing. We were going to have to buy more gum before the day was over.

Once we were on the ground, Pete gradually relaxed. But as we pulled into the gate, he motioned to me to stay seated. “Wait,” he said.

We watched all the other passengers leave. The man whom I had started to think of as “Hawkeyes” was one of the first ones off the plane. Maybe I was imagining things after all.

Not having any baggage makes flying a totally different experience. Except for my windbreaker and purse, I had nothing to keep track of. We retrieved Pete’s gun from Phoenix Airport security, then went down to the car-rental counter to pick up the compact Fred had reserved for us. As I gave the information for the rental contract, Pete leaned with his back against the counter, watching the people around us.

Outside, the morning was already turning warm. Only 9:00 A.M. and it must have been about eighty degrees out. I asked Pete if he would mind if I did the driving. He didn’t, and after accidentally turning the windshield wipers on while trying to adjust the steering wheel, we were on our way to Gila Bend.

Traffic in Phoenix was a bitch, so it took us a while to get clear of the city and its immediate neighbors on U.S. 10. The road became less and less crowded as we moved west. We passed the dark-green swath of farmlands along the Gila River, crossing over the river itself near Buckeye. We made the turnoff on Highway 85, and the landscape changed as we went south through clusters of dry Arizona mountains.

For miles we saw few signs of human inhabitants. Scattered here and there were vacant farm houses along the road. Broken windows gave them a forlorn look, as if they were ashamed of their shabbiness. Already scrub brush and cacti were reclaiming the abandoned fields.