Hole of Calcutta.
Forehead tight with worry and flecked with sweat, he wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and chinos; in this context, he looked like a jungle trader who left his pith helmet and hunter’s jacket at the door. He pulled out the wicker chair across from me and sat.
“Riskin’ a Zombie, huh?” he asked, apparently recognizing the tall slender glass.
“You’ll notice I’m not chugging it down.”
“There’s a house limit on two of those babies.”
“This seems like kind of an unlikely hangout for mechanics, Ernie. If you don’t mind my saying so.”
“It’s not a hangout, but sometimes for special events, goin’-away parties, celebrations. Best Chink food around.”
I was sorry to hear that; the ersatz Cantonese chow here had nothing on the Won Kow in Chinatown back home, but maybe Ernie and his airfield pals hadn’t made it to the local Chinatown. The waitress wandered over and Ernie ordered a beer and a plate of egg rolls to nibble on.
“That’s what Jimmy ordered,” he said, “a Zombie. The night of his goin’-away party, night he spilled the beans.”
“Jimmy who? What beans?”
He sighed, shook his head. “Maybe I better get a beer or two down me, first.”
I reached out and clutched his forearm. “Let’s get a head start, Ernie. Who’s Jimmy?”
“Jimmy. Jim Manhof.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “Skinny kid, mechanic, he was around when you was out here, last year. I don’t know whether you met him, exactly.”
I let go of his arm, leaned back. “I remember. You got a new man in his slot, I notice.”
“Yeah. Pete. Good boy, Pete. Jimmy, uh…his work started slippin’, and Mantz got on his ass and Jimmy finally quit. Last I heard, he had a job in Fresno, at Chandler Municipal.”
“Good for Jimmy. What about the beans Jimmy spilled?”
He swallowed. Shook his head. “I never told Paul about this. I don’t know why I’m tellin’ you….”
“I won’t tell Paul. Think of me as your priest.”
“I ain’t Catholic.”
“Neither am I, Ernie. Spill.”
The beer arrived. The waitress smiled at me; she was very pretty but her crooked teeth would keep her out of the movies. To let you know the state of my mood, I didn’t even ask for her phone number.
He gulped down half the beer, wiped the foam off his lip with a sleeve and said, “It was Jimmy put the acid on those rudder cables.”
“No kidding?”
“He told me about halfway through the second Zombie.”
“Nobody else heard him own up to that?”
“No. Tod was asleep, head on his arms like a kid snoozin’ at his school desk; he’d already finished his second Zombie.”
“Did Jimmy say
“Somebody hired him to…but it wasn’t supposed to be sabotage, exactly….”
“What the hell was it, then?”
“It was meant to be found, and repaired, before the plane took off. The guy that hired Jimmy said it was just a sort of…prank.”
“A real knee-slapper.”
“And of course, we did find it…Jimmy himself pointed it out to me. So, in a way…no harm was done. In a way.”
“Yeah. What’s the harm in sending a pilot off on a dangerous transcontinental flight, knowing her plane’s been sabotaged? Hoping all the damage got noticed by her trusty mechanics?”
He was shaking his head. “I know. It’s real, real shitty. But that’s not even the shittiest part. The shittiest part is who hired Jimmy.”
“Her husband, you mean. G. P.”
His eyes popped. “How the hell did you—”
“I told you—I’m a detective.”
I filled Ernie in on G. P.’s motive, the phony threatening notes that the rudder cable sabotage was meant to validate.
“He’s such a raging asshole,” Tisor said, shaking his head some more. “Lord knows what he’s got her into now.” And he ran a hand over his face and up into his salt-and-pepper hair. “Aw…Christ. Such a sweet kid. What’s that bastard done to her…”
A parrot squawked in the courtyard.
“What do you mean, Ernie? What is it you’ve seen?”
