Dead and Gone

I slipped my cell phone into one of the big plastic bags he was carrying. The working class may be able to afford decent luggage now, but the out-of-work class has to improvise. I figured he might use the phone once he discovered it, but more likely he’d sell it. Either way, if anyone was wired in, good fucking luck to them if they thought they’d located me.

We chugged away around two in the morning, set to arrive L.A. just before nine the night after the next one coming—a few hours under two full days.

The bus was more than half empty. I settled in, grateful for the privacy.

Although it was a much longer run than Philly to Chicago had been, we made only one stop. Las Vegas, on day two, a half-hour layover. Just enough time to pick up all the high rollers who’d left their return plane ticket in the same pawnshops where they’d left their jewelry.

You could see it stamped on their faces—if they’d had just one more shot, they would have flown from Tap City to Fat City, nonstop. That wheel was about to turn, the slot they fancied was warming up, the dice couldn’t keep breaking against them.…

I was a crowded, morose trip into East L.A. And, from there, maybe a dozen miles and half an hour to another planet. Beverly Hills.

“Nice to see you again, sir,” the bellman at the Four Seasons said. Faking it, figuring he couldn’t lose even if he was wrong.

I carried my own bag.

The smartly dressed young man behind the front desk didn’t blink at my field jacket and two-day growth— people in the movie industry are special, right? He found the reservation in a minute.

“You’ll be with us three nights, is that right, Mr. Jones?”

“That’s right.”

“Great! Now, if we could just have your credit card for an imprint …”

“It should all be direct-billed.”

“Let me see.… So it is! We have a lovely large room for you, sir. On the sixth floor, overlooking the back gardens. Will you be needing any help with your luggage?”

“I can manage,” I said, taking the white paper folder with the key, patiently waiting while he explained about the honor bar, the gym, my choice of newspaper in the morning.…

The room was fresh and clean. I was tired. And down in minutes.

When the phone rang in the morning, I picked it up without saying anything.

“Everything all right, honey?”

“Perfect,” I told Michelle. “That corporate-credit-card thing worked like a charm.”

“I charm everything I touch, baby.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Are you okay?”

“Didn’t you already ask me that?”

“What if I did? A real answer would be nice.”

“I don’t know anything yet. I’m going up to Vancouver tomorrow, if I can hook up with …”

“I spoke with him. He says anytime you want. Anything you want.”

“He’s got a good memory.”

“So do I, sweet boy. Be careful.”

“Don’t worry. I know I’m working blind.”

“Is it really you?” the tall, slender man with the cream-in-coffee complexion asked. I knew he was a few years past my age, but he looked twenty years younger.

“It’s me, Byron.”

“Sounds like … you. Mind talking some more, just so I can be sure?”

“When’s the last time you flew a four-engine Connie?”

His face didn’t twitch, but his eyes flashed. Flashed back. To the tiny airstrip on the Portuguese island of Sao Tome. To a big plane loaded to the brim with stockfish from Iceland—the maximum amount of nourishment for its space and weight. Then the frantic run over black water and even darker jungle, hoping the Nigerian jets with their hired-killer pilots wouldn’t get lucky. No parachutes on board. Everybody riding had their own reason for risking death, but none of them was willing to risk being taken alive.

It was the tail end of 1969, just before the breakaway country of Biafra fell to Nigeria’s overwhelming military superiority. Already at least a million dead. Mostly kids. Mostly from starvation.

Biafra was nothing more than a dream for whoever was left then, a tiny jagged piece of jungle, as vulnerable as a crippled cat in a dog pound. By that time, it was fully landlocked. Their leader had fled to the Ivory Coast. A Red Cross plane had been shot down. Even the media was gone.

Tribalism on full amok. If the Biafrans kept fighting, actual genocide was a real possibility. No point running guns in there anymore, but without food nobody would live long enough to surrender. For a landing field, there was only a dirt track cut into the jungle. We came in, guided by a radio until we got close. Then they fired the string of flares on the ground. A thirty-second window.

Byron set the big plane down softly. Before he could shut off the engine, people charged out of the jungle, desperate the way only starvation can make you. One man ran right into one of the still-whirling propellers. At least his terror died, too.

In a short while, the plane took off. I stayed on the ground.