Corcovado, Or Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars

"On Route 4? Jesus, could we be that lucky?"

"We've got both exits covered."

"We need witnesses," she said. "Try and take 'em alive."

The trooper nodded, but his face was a mask.

"Okay, what else happened? What are you not telling me?"

"An assistant AG was up in Burlington, run down by a car about three hours ago. A tan Ford, maybe a Fairlane."

"Find the car?"

"Yes, Ma'am. Abandoned up by the Canadian border, near Richford, I think."

"Prints?"

The trooper shook his head. "Torched. A second body in the trunk."

"Female?"

"Yes, Ma'am, working for NYPD, wearing a wire. That Assistant AG was running her case, had come up for a meet."

"Pickering? Stephanie Pickering?"

"Yes, Ma'am. You know her?"

"For a few years, yes..."

"Liz?"

She heard James at the door and turned, saw him standing in the doorway. "I'll be up in a minute," she said.

"Want me to put on coffee?"

"Could you?"

"Yup."

She heard the door close, gently, then turned back to the trooper.

"Word is, Ma'am, that Mr Hoover is involved now. We're supposed to keep this house under surveillance. Sorry, Ma'am."

She nodded. "Tell your men coffee will be ready in a couple minutes. Back door."

"Thank you, Ma'am."

+++++

Altair was quiet now, all his friends gone. Ted had gone below a half hour ago, though Susan had waited for him a few minutes more. He sat in the darkness, sitting on the cockpit seat behind the wheel - wondering if he would ever have any control over his life again, though he was not at all tired. He felt movement and looked up, saw Brigit Sullivan up on the bow looking down into the black water, and he wondered what she'd seen. An otter, perhaps? A harbor seal?

Then she looked aft, saw him sitting in the cockpit - alone.

And she came to him.

"Busy night," she said as she climbed over the tall coaming and settled-in next to him. "Did you ever think you had so many friends?"

"Never."

A lot of people love you, Jim. You're a lucky man."

He looked at the remains of his leg and smiled at life's little ironies. "Ah, is that what I am?"

She leaned into him, put her head on his shoulder - daring him to push her away - but he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked, her voice quivering a little.

"I've called about having Altair moved to Florida. I could commute to Atlanta from there, I suppose."

"Is that what you want to do?"

She felt him shrug.

"What about you?" he asked.

"What about me?"

"What do you want?"

"To be with you."

And there it was. Three words - out of the night and into his heard. The three words he'd been hoping to hear for weeks.

"Have you found out anything on the immigration front?"

"I'm a physician. It won't be a problem."

"What about Florida?"

"I'm more concerned about you working again."

"Oh?"

"What about loading up Altair, just slipping free of all this."

"You mean, like, just sail away?"

"Yes."

He sighed - and he felt her snuggle closer still. "Would that interest you?"

"Me? Maybe so. I've done the medicine thing for twenty years. I could use a break, I think. What about you?"

"I don't think I'm ready to call it quits. I guess I love what I do too much to just walk away now."

"So...Florida?"

"It feels right. Teaching, I mean. Maybe for a few years, then I can take full retirement."

"I know. One of your chums explained it all to me. It would make a big difference, wouldn't it?"

He nodded. "I'd be comfortable that way. Not have to worry about keeping Altair. If I cut loose now, it could be an issue in ten years. And I'm not sure this is the best time to leave Ted on his own, too."

"Oh, Susan has him wrapped around her little finger."

"I know. That's what bothers me."

"Oh...?"

"He's got too many unanswered questions to take this path - so suddenly."

"That other girl...Tracy, was it? What was that all about."

"Just a stray we picked up by the side of the road," he said, his voice barely a sigh.

"What?"

"She was a mistake," he said, thinking about her asking to see his pilot's license, about a poor, frantic girl running away in the night, looking to take charge, somehow, while she still could.

"Do you know what happened to her?"

He nodded. "Yup. She'd been picked up, a teenager on the street in Sydney. Sold off to someone in New Orleans, I think."

"Sold off? You mean...?"

"Trafficked. A slave. She broke free, was running from them..."

"Them?"

"Apparently Chinese traffickers. They run drugs through the girls for a while, then sell them off to the dealers, as human playthings. At least that's the story I've heard. Anyway, most of 'em end up dead after a few years."

"So I've heard. Is that what Melissa does?"

"I don't know what that woman does, Brigit. She's a mystery."

"Do you like her?"

"Like her?" he sighed. "I'm terrified of her."

"Terrified? Why?"

"Because I don't know what her back game is. Because nothing's what it appears to be where she's concerned."

+++++

The Bureau shut down the Hong Kong operation before it ever started. Somehow the operation had been penetrated, maybe a weak link in the New York office, and now a federal prosecutor was dead, several informants too. And the thinking was that professionals had been called in to take out her family.

It was time, her supervisors told her, to move her family.

"Where?" she asked her supervisors.

"What about your husband's father? Didn't he have a farm out West? Somewhere in New Mexico?

She thought of the old man, thought of him and that ranch of his, that ranch - and all those goddamn airplanes...

C8

When they arrived at his grandfather's ranch in New Mexico, Jimmie climbed out of the back of the overstuffed Ford station wagon and stretched, then his mouth fell open. There wasn't a tree - a real tree, anyway - in sight. There were a few scraggly looking things that resembled trees on a distant hillside, but everywhere he looked he saw brown grass on rolling brown hills. His grandfather's house looked like it was made of the same stuff, too - some kind of brown mud, he thought...

And even his grandfather looked kind of brown - like he'd become a living, breathing part of this arid landscape.

He remembered his father talking about him all the way across the country. How Ellis, his grandfather, had flown "in the first war..." then come home and built the hardware store into a real, going concern. Not content with being a storekeeper, Ellis had started building houses, a few here and there, then dozens at a time. In the early 1920s, long before the Crash, he'd built one of the first public aerodromes in Vermont, and pretty soon Ellis Patterson was giving flying lessons to anyone who dropped by on Saturday mornings, including nearly all the pretty young "gals" in the Northern Kingdom. He married one of those girls, Sarah was her name, and they started a family. And times were good.

Until 1929, anyway.

Because Ellis Patterson very nearly lost everything he'd built in the Crash.

But the hardware store kept the family afloat, and after Roosevelt's election in '32 he got busy again, securing contracts to built airports up and down the Connecticut River Valley. He taught his son, James, to fly before the boy went off to college...but by then another war looked more and more likely. Ellis worried about his son going off to fight over there, but he also knew enough about the world to not worry about things he could neither foresee or control..

Then Ellis' wife Sarah died of influenza, and he fell away from the world after that - for a while, anyway. James was in his second year when he bid on several airports the government wanted built in a hurry - out in the middle of New Mexico. He had people he trusted to run the chain of hardware stores he'd built up in Vermont and New Hampshire, so when he won the bid he took his best crews out west...to a sleepy little city called Santa Fe.

His company literally built a dozen airports in a little more than a year, from Santa Fe north to Los Alamos and Taos in the northern part of the state, and as far south as Socorro in the south. As most were being used as training facilities for the Army Air Corp, his business expanded to include building-out these airports as military facilities. And along the way he picked up a parcel of land near a little town west of Santa Fe called White Rock.

So, of course, the first thing he built on his little place was a runway, then he added a few hangers. Then a few more. When he went to "the Ranch," as he started to call it, he usually slept in a tent and made do with bottled water, but one morning he woke up and stepped outside his tent and ran into a rattlesnake - and that put an end to sleeping on the ground. So he built a stable and bought a couple of horses, then started roaming the ranch, looking for just the right spot to build a little house.

One Saturday afternoon he was riding through some piñon and he came upon a break in a rocky escarpment that split his property into two zones. Below the escarpment the land was flat and almost bleak, while beyond the break mountains, real mountains loomed.

He looked at the rocks and studied them for a while, feeling something odd...something he'd not felt since flying in the skies over France. He felt like he was being watched, by a predator.

He rode into the break, the horse he was on taking short, tentative steps. The opening in the rocks was perhaps fifty yards wide, the walls a good sixty feet tall, and there were pines inside the opening, lining the way ahead. He rode quietly, then stopped when he saw at the horse's ears lay back; he pulled the Winchester 30-30 from the scabbard and laid it across his thighs, just as the hair on the back of his neck stood on end...

He felt something new, a stirring in the wind perhaps, and he turned, saw a cat making it's sprint, felt the cat's eyes boring in on his, and he raised the Winchester and fired once.

He fired short, deliberately, willing the cat to stop - and the animal did.

And they each stood their ground - watching one another for the longest time - then the cat turned and walked away, up into the trees above the little canyon.

He watched the cat until it disappeared, then he let the horse walk ahead at it's own pace.

The little canyon followed a stream, bending first to the left, then bending back on itself in a hard oxbow to the right...and after perhaps a quarter mile the canyon gave way to a bowl-shaped valley...

He climbed down from the horse and looked around, stunned by what he'd just stumbled upon. There was good water in the huge bowl, and green grass everywhere he looked. A small pond...no, several ponds, falling down the hill at the far end of the valley in a series of small waterfalls. He saw a perfect spot for the house he had in mind, but the next thing he thought about was desecrating this spot.

It was perfect. Too perfect. If he built here he'd spoil this land forever...and just then he saw the cat up in the trees - watching him. Like the cat was weighing his decision too.

He turned and got back on the horse, then returned to the escarpment and walked along the scattered scree for another hour. He stopped once and looked down valley, could see his runway and the half-dozen hangers he'd built nestled in the piñon scrub. He dismounted again and walked out on a small promontory; he scratched at the rocky soil with his boot and looked at the hard-scrabble, then he turned and looked at the opening in the escarpment. There's be water here too, he knew, though he'd have to drill for it, but from where he stood he could see Santa Fe in the distance, and even Albuquerque far off to the south.

"This'll do," Ellis Patterson said, to a passing breeze. A few days later his crews were hard at work on the new house.

+++++

Jim watched tension build in the air - like wires between two towers. High tension, like an uneasy awakening, when his father and grandfather shook hands.

"Long drive, isn't it?" Ellis Patterson said, almost defiantly - like he'd had his doubts his son was up to such a journey.

"I wouldn't want to do it in summer," James Patterson added.

"Get's bad once you leave St. Louis," Ellis nodded. "Unless you turn on the air." Jim had never heard the city pronounced like Saint Lew-ee before, and now he stared at this stranger - wondering what was wrong with the old fart.

"Don't have air-conditioning," his father added. "Never needed it back home."

"Well, you'll need it here, so you might as well think about getting rid of that heap before summer comes."

Jim watched this exchange, wondering why these two seemed almost at odds with one another...then he turned and saw his mother - staring at some buildings down the hill. He turned and looked at them, too; he saw one was an airplane hanger - and there was a silver airplane inside, protected from the sun. It was, he could just see now, a red-nosed P-51 Mustang - and his heart started racing. His father had flown one in the war and now, right here in the middle of the desert, there one sat. Even sitting still, almost lost in shadow, the airplane looked like a living thing. Lethal, full of menace - full of all the stories his father had told him about combat in the skies over Europe.

But...what was this thing doing out here, lost under New Mexican skies.

When he turned back to his father he saw both men staring at his mother, looking at her looking at him, and trying to read her reaction.

When he looked at his mother he thought she looked a little like a volcano.

Maybe right before an eruption.

His first impulse was to flee.

+++++

"I thought I saw her out there tonight," he said, pointing to the parking lot above the marina. She was there, and then she was gone."

"I didn't see her," Brigit said. "I haven't seen her in weeks."

"Funny, but sometimes it feels like she's watching me. Us, maybe."

"Us? You mean you and...?"

"Ted. Ted called me a few weeks ago, said he'd run into her at a Starbucks near campus. He goes there after this one class, usually with a bunch from his study group. And there she was, waiting."

"Did they talk?"

"Yup. Just pleasantries, a little about me, then she left. He called me that afternoon, wondered what it meant."

"Do you know?"

"What it means? I'm not sure. I can't get her to open up, but ever since she showed up at Nancy's..."

"The bakery?"

"Yeah. She was there, I'm pretty sure she was after that girl, Tracy. She hasn't said why, not directly anyway, but maybe she thinks I'm tied up with stuff. And that's what bothers me."

"What stuff?"

"Trafficking. Human trafficking."

She laughed. "I doubt that. I think she likes you."

"Likes me? Hell, I think she hates me."

Sullivan looked at him, sitting in the cockpit - in the middle of his night - and she thought he really might remain in the dark. Clueless. Anyone could tell Melissa loved him, even Ted. Why else would she be keeping an eye on them both. Obviously that wayward girl - Tracy - had exposed them both to unknown dangers, so Melissa was keeping an eye on them.

She wanted to change the subject just then. Wanted to keep his mind off Melissa. She looked at the stainless steel of his prothesis gleaming in the moonlight, and she wanted to ask how it felt, but no. She realized how little she knew about his life, about his one true love.

So, she asked.

+++++

He was on one of his grandfather's horses, following the old man along a winding trail that led away from the main house. A tall, rocky ledge was off to the right, and they were slowly converging on an opening in the formation.

"You need to be quiet now, boy," his grandfather whispered. "And keep your eyes on those rocks," he added, pointing at the escarpment.

He, of course, had heard stories of the cat. How his grandfather had stared the beast down. The first time his father visited, right after the war, he too had made this trip out to the rocks, and he too had seen the cat. It was, his father told him the night before, a rite of passage.

"What's that?" Jimmy asked.

"Well, it's like something you have to do before you can become a man."

"Oh."

And he'd thought about that for a while.

"So, seeing this cat is going to make me a man?"

And he'd seen his grandfather looking at his father - with a strange grin on his face.

"Well, not exactly. But it'll help."

"Oh."

Now, as he looked at the rocky cliff, and the scree along the base, he had his eyes peeled - looking for any sign of movement...

And then his grandfather's horse stopped.

The old mare pawed at the ground - twice - and his grandfather pulled the old, weatherbeaten 30-30 from it's scabbard one more time.

"Come here, boy," his grandfather whispered.

"Do you see him?" Jim asked.

"Top of the ridge," his grandfather said, pointing a little to their left, "under that big rock, in the shadows."

He looked and looked - but didn't see a thing...then...movement caught his eye. His eyes locked on, went right to the cat then - and he gasped out loud. "It's huge," he whispered, his voice straining to conceal the fear he felt welling up.

"Big cat, alright. Mean son of a bitch, too."

Then the cat was working it's way down the rocky face, hardly ever taking it's eyes off them, and he watched as his grandfather cocked the rifle, then planted the butt on top of his thigh, the barrel pointing at the sun. The cat leapt over several boulders - then disappeared in the scrub and piñon.

"Get behind me, boy," his grandfather said, and while he maneuvered behind his grandfather's mare he heard the old man talking to himself. "She's acting strange, boy. She hasn't acted like this in a long time."

Then he saw the cat off to their right. She had circled around and was streaking in now; his grandfather saw the cat and fired once - into the sky - but this time the cat wasn't falling for it. He watched as his grandfather worked the lever, chambering another round, and then as he sighted-in on the cat - now less than a hundred yards away and closing fast...

And the mare saw the cat then, too, and began bucking...

And he watched his grandfather falling to the ground, the Winchester arcing through the air...

He reacted now. No thought at all, just pure adrenaline fueled reaction...

He jumped off his old nag and picked up the carbine, fired one round - striking the cat's shoulder; it stumbled once then it's legs gave out and she slid to a stop not ten feet away.

Growling.

Wounded now, very angry, and growling.

He did what his grandfather had done. He worked the lever, chambered a round and held the cat in his sights.

"She's wounded, Jimmy. Bad. You can't leave her like this."

He nodded, looked the cat in the eye - then pulled the trigger.

They rode back and got to the house just before sunset, walked up to the barn under reddening clouds; his mother looked at the cat tied-off behind her son's saddle and shook her head. She wondered, for a moment, who had killed the cat - but then she saw the look in her son's eyes. She had, after all, been teaching him to shoot for years, and she'd had to admit more than once he was at least as good a shot as she. His father walked up and helped get the cat off the saddle, then they walked the horses, let them cool off, then they watered them and stabled them for the night. By they time he walked to the house the cat was gone.

His grandfather told the tale that night. About Jimmy's presence of mind, and how he'd saved them both out there. His father listened quietly but inside he seethed; his mother was lost between waves and anger and pride.

After dinner, after Jim went to bed, they tried, gently, to remind Ellis that they'd come out west to avoid being killed by Chinese gangsters. Being killed by a mountain lion wasn't any less appealing.