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“Now show me your hands!”
Two empty hands thrust out the window. Male hands. A white, long-sleeved dress shirt, crisply laundered, with gold cuff links.
“Driver, open the door from the outside and slowly step out of the vehicle!”
The driver exited as ordered.
Khakis, Ray-Bans, and a yellow ball cap with the image of a bull on it — the Lamborghini logo. I didn’t recognize him until he opened his big, self-important mouth.
“I’m a lawyer! I know my rights! And that son of a bitch,” he said, pointing angrily toward me, “has been trying to fuck my fiancée for months!”
His fiancée. Charise MacInerny. My former student. From an i
The cops ordered him out felony-style, face-down on the pavement, and handcuffed him with his wrists pulled behind his back. He screamed police brutality. They were fucking with the wrong man, he warned them; he’d see all their asses in court.
I walked over.
“There’s never been anything between Charise and me,” I said as two CHP officers yanked him to his feet.
“You’re a liar!” Louis seethed. “You took her to Paris!”
“I what?”
“You wrote it in that pilot book you gave her—‘We’ll always have Paris!’”
I started laughing.
“What, you think this is fu
“Louie,” I said in my best Bogie imitation which, truth be told, pretty much sucks, “this is the begi
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
I turned without answering and strode back to my truck.
The police dragged him kicking and screaming to a patrol car. They hog-tied his ankles when he continued to resist, and tossed him in like a bale of cotton. One of the cops told me I could give my statement at police headquarters at my convenience and said I was free to go.
I debated going home. I drove to the airport instead.
The Duck was waiting for me on the tarmac like a reliable old friend. We flew until day turned to dusk and dusk to dark.
The air was glass.