She did. “So did you check with the charter companies in Denver?”
“I tried. Not much joy there, either, though. Of the five companies that flew jets of one size n another, only two’d even talk to me. They didn’t have to, did they? I was just a small-town newspaperman lookin into an accidental death, not a cop investigating a crime. Also, one of em pointed out to me that it wasn’t just a question of checking up on the FBOs that flew jets out of Stapleton—”
“What are FBOs?”
“Fixed Base Operators,” Vince said. “Chartering aircraft is only one of the things they do. They get clearances, maintain little terminals for passengers who are flyin private so they canstay that way, they sell, service, and repair aircraft. You can go through U.S. Customs at lots of FBOs, buy an altimeter if yours is busted, or catch eight hours in the pilots’ lounge if your current flyin time is maxed out. Some FBOs, like Signature Air, are big business—chain operations just like Holiday Inn or McDonald’s. Others are seat-of-the-pants outfits with not much more than a coin-op snack machine inside and a wind-sock by the runway.”
“You did some research,” Stephanie said, impressed.
“Ayuh, enough to know that it isn’t just Colorado pilots and Colorado planes that used Stapleton or any other Colorado airport, then or now. For instance, a plane from an FBO at LaGuardia in New York might fly into Denver with passengers who were going to spend a month in Colorado visiting relatives. The pilots would then ask around for passengers who wanted to go back to New York, just so they wouldn’t have to make the return empty.”
“Or these days they’d have their return passengers all set up ahead of time by computer,” Dave said. “Do you see, Steff?”
She did. She saw something else as well. “So the records on Mr. Cogan’s Wild Ride might be in the files of Air Eagle, out of New York.”
“Or Air Eagle out of Montpelier, Vermont—” Vince said.
“Or Just Ducky Jets out of Washington, D.C.,” Dave said.
“And if Cogan paid cash,” Vince added, “there are quite likely no records at all.”
“But surely there are all sorts of agencies—”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dave said. “More than you could shake a stick at, beginning with the FAA and ending with the IRS. Wouldn’t be surprised if the damn FFA wasn’t in there somewhere. But in cash deals, paperwork gets thin. Remember Helen Hafner?”
Of course she did. Their waitress at the Grey Gull. The one whose son had recently fallen out of his treehouse and broken his arm.She gets all of it, Vince had said of the money he meant to put in Helen Hafner’s pocket,and what Uncle Sam don’t know don’t bother him. To which Dave had added,It’s the way America does business.
Stephanie supposed it was, but it was an extremely troublesome way of doing business in a case like this one.
“So you don’t know,” she said. “You tried your best, but you just don’t know.”
Vince looked first surprised, then amused. “As to tryin my best, Stephanie, I don’t think a person ever knows that for sure; in fact, I think most of us are condemned—damned, even!—to thinking we could have done just a little smidge better, even when we win through to whatever it was we were tryin to get. But you’re wrong— Ido know. He chartered a jet out of Stapleton. That’s what happened.”
“But you said—”
He leaned even further forward over his clasped hands, his eyes fixed on hers. “Listen carefully and take instruction, dearheart. It’s long years since I read Sherlock Holmes, so I can’t say this exactly, but at one point the great detective tells Dr. Watson somethin like this: ‘When you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left—no matter how improbable —must be the answer.’ Now we know that the Colorado Kid was in his Denver office buildin until ten-fifteen or ten-twenty on that Wednesday morning. And we can be pretty sure he was in Jan’s Wharfside at five- thirty. Hold up your fingers like you did before, Stephanie.”
She did as he asked, left forefinger for the Kid in Colorado, right forefinger for James Cogan in Maine. Vince unlocked his hands and touched her right forefinger briefly with one of his own, age meeting youth in midair.
“But don’t call this finger five-thirty,” he said. “We needn’t trust the counter-girl, who wasn’t run off her feet the way she would have been in July, but who was doubtless busy all the same, it bein the supper-hour and all.”
Stephanie nodded. In this part of the world supper came early. Dinner—pronounceddinnah —was what you ate from your lunchpail at noon, often while out in your lobster boat.
“Let this finger be six o’clock,” he said. “The time of the last ferry.”
She nodded again. “He had to be on that one, didn’t he?”
“He did unless he swam the reach,” Dave said.
“Or chartered a boat,” she said.
“We asked,” Dave said. “More important, we asked Gard Edwick, who was the ferryman in the spring of ’80.”
Did Cogan bring him tea? she suddenly found herself wondering.Because if you want to ride the ferry, you’re supposed to bring tea for the tillerman. You said so yourself, Dave. Or are the ferryman andthe tillerman two different people?
“Steff?” Vince sounded concerned. “Are you all right, dear?”
“I’m fine, why?”
“You looked…I dunno, like you came over strange.”
“I sort of did. It’s a strange story, isn’t it?” And then she said, “Only it’s not a story at all, you were so right about that, and if I came over strange, I suppose that’s why. It’s like trying to ride a bike across a tightrope that isn’t there.”
Stephanie hesitated, then decided to go on and make a complete fool of herself.
“Did Mr. Edwick remember Cogan because Cogan brought him something? Because he brought tea for the tillerman?”
For a moment neither man said anything, just regarded her with their inscrutable eyes—so strangely young and sweetly lad-like in their old faces—and she thought she might laugh or cry or do something, break out somehow just to kill her anxiety and growing certainty that she had made a fool of herself.
Vince said, “It was a chilly crossing. Someone—a man—brought a paper cup of coffee to the pilot house and handed it in to Gard. They only passed a few words. This was April, remember, and by then it was already going dark. The man said, ‘Smooth crossing.’ And Gard said, ‘Ayuh.’ Then the man said ‘This has been a long time coming’ or maybe ‘I’ve been a long time coming.’ Gard said it might have even been ‘Lidle ’s been a long time coming.’ There is such a name; there’s none in the Tinnock phone book, but I’ve found it in quite a few others.”
“Was Cogan wearing the green coat or the topcoat?”
“Steff,” Vince said, “Gard not only didn’t remember whether or not the man was wearing a coat; he probably couldn’t have sworn in a court of law if the man was afoot or on hossback. It was gettin dark, for one thing; it was one little act of kindness and a few passed words recalled a year and a half downstream, for a second; for a third…well, old Gard, you know…” He made a bottle-tipping gesture.
“Speak no ill of the dead, but the man drank like a frickin fish,” Dave said. “He lost the ferryman job in ’85, and the Town put him on the plow, mostly so his family wouldn’t starve. He had five kids, you know, and a wife with MS. But finally he cracked up the plow, doin Main Street while blotto, and put out all the frickin power for a frickin week in February, pardon my frickinfranзais . Then he lost that job and he was on the town. So am I surprised he didn’t remember more? No, I am not. But I’m convinced from what hedid remember that, ayuh, the Colorado Kid came over from the mainland on the day’s last ferry, and, ayuh, he brought tea for the tillerman, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Good on you to remember about that, Steff.” And he patted her hand. She smiled at him. It felt like a rather dazed smile.
“As you said,” Vince resumed, “there’s that two-hour time-difference to factor in.” He moved her left finger closer to her right. “It’s quarter past twelve, east coast time, when Cogan leaves his office. He drops his easy- going, just-another-day act the minute the elevator doors open on the lobby of his building. The verysecond . He goes dashin outside, hellbent for election, where that fast car—and an equally fast driver—is waitin for him.
“Half an hour later, he’s at a Stapleton FBO, and five minutes after that, he’s mounting the steps of a
