Voodoo Ridge

“I’ve been thinking,” she said.

“Always a dangerous proposition.”

“We should just leave past issues in the past. I won’t ask you again what you did, your real job.”

I watched a bead of water course the length of her throat and down, seductively, between her breasts.

“You mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“That would be two personal questions tonight, Logan.” She leaned closer to me, her hands cupped with warm water, and slowly rinsed the lather from my neck. “I’m not sure we really know each other that well.”

“Ever gotten busy in a purple tub?”

She pretended to think about it for a while. “Can’t say that I have. You?”

“Never.”

Her lips curled mischievously. “Well, you know what they say? There’s a first time for everything.” Then she leaned in closer and softly kissed my closed eyes.

Beneath the suds, something brushed against my leg and glided northward, to more sensitive anatomical turf.

I knew it wasn’t the soap.

Sleep should’ve come easily that night. Sava

“Where’re you going?” Sava

“Gotta run a quick errand. Go back to sleep.”

“Promise you’ll come back?”

I bent down and kissed her shoulders. “Promise you’ll be here if I do?”

She smiled.

“Promise.”

Kiddiot was curled like a ball on the floor near the bed, his face buried in his tail. He didn’t stir as I dressed and left. My watch showed 0335 hours.

Save for a street-sweeping truck washing down the vomit and spilled beer outside the bars and dance clubs on lower California Street that had closed more than an hour earlier, downtown Rancho Bonita was quiet. Not another car in sight, all the way to the beach.

I parked my truck along Magellan Boulevard, got out, and walked across the sand. The tide was out. The moon was gone. The gun was tucked in the small of my back. It had been my primary backup weapon when I served with Alpha — the theory being that a revolver is less prone to misfire than a more mechanically complex semiauto and, thus, more reliable in a pinch. More than once, the little snub nose had saved my life. But that life was behind me now.

I threw it as far into the ocean as I could. Then I drove home.

Heavy and hirsute, Larry Kropf trudged out of his hangar at the Rancho Bonita Airport and onto the flight line, grimacing on two bad knees and wiping his greasy hands on a greasy rag.

“Where’re you headed, Logan?”

“Lake Tahoe,” I said, loading the last of the luggage into the back of the Ruptured Duck. “We’re getting remarried.”

Larry peered at Sava

“Remarried?” Larry asked. “Nobody in their right mind marries the same woman twice, Logan. Why repeat the same mistake?”

“Uh, hello.” Sava

“Sava

“Not just your mechanic,” Larry said. “The guy you rent hangar space from for your wildly successful international flight school.”

“Larry’s being somewhat sarcastic,” I said.

“I would’ve never guessed,” Sava

He might’ve fancied himself a badass, but Larry was, in truth, a big softie who’d give you the proverbial size XXXL shirt off his furry back if you needed it. He knew that my “wildly successful” flight school was on the brink of insolvency, and that I owed him about $30,000 in repairs to the Ruptured Duck, as well as back rent. He also knew that I had no way to repay him in full given my financial straits, which was why he’d stopped hounding me. Every so often, though, he couldn’t help but get a dig in. Call it catharsis. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

“Well,” Larry said, “I hope you at least got enough cash to pay for the marriage license.”

I locked the Duck’s cargo door and resisted the urge to check my wallet.

“How much does he owe you?” Sava

“Twenty-nine large and change.” Larry took off his glasses and wiped them on his T-shirt. “But who’s counting anymore, right?”

“How ’bout thirty grand and we call it even?” Sava

Larry looked at her like he wasn’t sure she was serious. “I’d say, ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ ” he said.

My ex-wife got out a pen and her checkbook.

A real man is supposed to make his own way in the world, relying on no one but himself. A real man’s code of honor prohibits him from taking anything except that which he deserves. He doesn’t stand idly by, watching his wealthy former spouse casually cover his five-figure IOU like she was buying a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies. But all I could muster was a meek, “You really don’t have to do that, Sava

“You’re right. I don’t have to, Logan. I want to. We’re a team now. And, besides, Larry needs the money, right?”

“Putting it mildly,” Larry said.

Sava

I told Sava

“Take me to Tahoe, flyboy,” is all she said.

THREE

Pilots joke that a smooth landing is mostly luck, that greasing an airplane onto the runway twice in a row is all luck, and that three in a row is prevarication. Many aviators consider their ability to return a flying machine safely to the ground in reusable condition the ultimate measure of skill. Not me. For me, it’s all about passenger comfort. Looking over at Sava

For any good airman, regardless of how relaxing he may claim it is, flying is rarely without worry. You worry about the ever unpredictable variability of weather. The fear of midair collision with another airplane ranks right up there. Little, however, contributes more to a pilot’s pucker factor than the potential of some catastrophic mechanical failure occurring miles above the earth, especially in an aging, single-engine bird like the Ruptured Duck. Ordinarily, I would’ve been constantly scrutinizing the gauges, fretting about the occasional creak or groan that all airplanes make—“Indian night noises,” the leather-helmeted old timers used to call them — all the while sca

But not on that day. On that day, flying Sava