Stanley shook him. ‘What does that mean?’
‘In my toolbox.’
Stanley jerked his head at it, looking at Tom, his meaning clear. He pointed the gun as Tom moved to the toolbox.
‘Where?’
Halo’s head hung in shame. His voice was muffled. ‘Bottom drawer. Under the foam.’
Tom slid it open. Each of Halo’s Snap-on wrenches was neatly bedded in its designated foam template. He slid his hand into the narrow drawer, right to the back. The back corner of the foam bedding was slightly raised. Tom peeled it back and felt the lump of metal he’d once cut out of the flank of an ostrich.
Slowly he picked it up.
‘Bring it here.’
His mind racing for an escape route, Tom did. Stanley dropped Halo and took the bolt from him, keeping the gun trained on Tom’s chest. Halo fell to his hands and knees.
Tom swallowed a lump in his throat. Now was the moment. They’d given up the bolt; they’d run out of leverage. And – unlike Bruce Willis or Brad Pitt or some other better-scripted sonofabitch – he was fresh out of clever ideas.
He looked Stanley straight in the eyes. ‘Stanley, I don’t know how many other fan discs were in batch 501, but you’d better find them.’
‘I don’t think you’re in any position to give orders right now, do you?’
Tom strove for sincerity, for humbleness, to keep the hatred out of his voice. ‘I’m not. I’m just telling you. Even by your shitty fake standards, those fan discs are made in Hong Kong. Whoever you work for needs to know that something’s gone badly wrong. People have died. A lot more people will die if you don’t get those parts out of the planes they’re in.’
Stanley sneered, and levelled the gun at his face. ‘I’ll be sure to tell my priest.’
Tom sighed. ‘You prick.’ Dully, he wished he had the energy to think of better last words.
‘Freeze!’
Stanley swung round, dropped his stance and fired all in the same movement, the bullet singing off the corrugated-metal wall beside the surprised face of the airport cop, who – with admirable devotion to duty, Tom thought, as he hurled himself to one side – squeezed off two rounds before ducking out of the doorway.
Stanley never hesitated. He charged straight at the door, his gun held out in front of him, like a sabre, and when the cop chanced another look inside, Stanley was just four feet away and shot him right in the face without ever breaking stride.
There was a short silence, then the sound of an engine, a squeal of tyres and a flash of black-and-white as the cop car sped past the open door.
Tom found his motor skills and ran to the side door. Behind him another voice yelled, ‘Freeze!’
He threw up his splayed hands and yelled, ‘NTSB!’ but didn’t slow down until he dropped to his knees beside the still-twitching body of the airport cop, who’d done everything right except imagine for even one second that any man would be crazy enough to run straight down the muzzle of his service revolver.
Tom heard running footsteps coming at him from all sides, and turned to hold up his ID, but before he could get there, the first cop to reach him swung his gun into his face, and then what felt like the defensive line of the Green Bay Packers jumped on top of him, all eager to get a little piece before they could remember they were supposed to be the good guys.
At the bottom of the pile – squashed and pummelled – Tom was very faintly aware that he still felt rescued.
*
They didn’t want to let him go, of course. A cop was dead, a car stolen, an engineer beaten up, and a foul-mouthed check-in girl’s nail broken.
Tom called down his federal credentials, his ongoing investigation, his LA driver’s licence and, finally, swore on the life of his mother that he would return to answer questions within twenty-four hours. How were they to know she was already dead?
Once Halo, Lucia and a telephonically confused Pete LaBello managed to convince them of various aspects of the truth, the airport cops took a brief preliminary statement, withheld his driver’s licence, and reluctantly released him just as the DC flight finished boarding.
They didn’t go so far as to apologize, but one of them gave him the number of his dentist, who’d apparently done a great job when his own tooth got broken ‘in the line of duty’, as he put it. In the line of a fucking rent-a-cop steel toe-cap, Tom thought, but, for once, managed not to say.
Then the American Airlines flight attendants were wary of letting him board because of the blood that kept dripping from his mouth onto his shirt, forcing Tom to swallow it in a pretence that it had stopped, then buy a fresh T-shirt from the gift shop with ‘Only in LA’ across the front, before they warily stood aside and let him follow Lucia onto what he was unsurprised to see was a 737.
Seat 15C was on the aisle. Lucia was in 15D. Tom noted automatically that they were five rows back from the exit door over the wing. He sat down bare inches above what he could now only hope was the answer to every question he’d ever asked about fake fan discs, and fastened his seatbelt.
41
TOM READ THE safety card assiduously as they taxied. He glanced at Lucia and saw the tension in her. He could have given her chapter and verse on the odds of survival that the seating plan, aircraft type and destination gave them in the event of a crash on take-off or landing, but instead he double-checked his seatbelt, then simply reached his hand across the aisle to hold hers as the thrust pressed them back in their seats and they left LA behind.
For a moment he thought about holding her sister’s hand, but Lucia’s was warm and gripped his firmly in return.
As soon as the seatbelt sign went off, Tom got on his knees and yanked his life preserver from under his seat. A passing flight attendant stopped and asked if she could help him, but Tom held up his ID and told her he was doing random safety checks. Then he asked for a Jack Daniel’s for him and a Coke for Lucia. ‘With rum in it,’ she said, and gave him a small smile.
‘While you’re on duty?’ the attendant said pointedly.
‘Make it a double,’ Tom shot back, and she withdrew.
‘Why do you have to piss everybody off?’ Lucia wondered.
‘I don’t. They piss me off.’
The elderly woman in 15B tutted but Tom ignored her.
The file was there. Tom pulled it out with hands that shook. He glanced up and Lucia was gazing at him with bright, questioning eyes. He nodded, hoping his excitement wasn’t misplaced.
