He laughed at that and gestured toward an SUV that gleamed white across the lot. “Let me get this line in, and we can talk inside my Rogue so you don’t melt any more than you already have, Mr. Snowman. I’ll tell you the truth about the great Tom Wheelwright. The whole truth and nothing but.”
The interior of the SUV smelled of his Cubanos. I observed a cigar burn in the otherwise pristine leather upholstery. He removed his straw hat and set it on the dash.
Unlike Wheelwright, who was impossibly fit in middle age, Fixico had acquired a belly since his air force days. He wore a guayabera shirt, relaxed-fit jeans, and flip-flops. A medical alert bracelet hung like a bangle from one thin wrist.
“So you’re a detective?” he said. “And your bureau flew you all the way down here to run a background check on a man applying to become a game warden? I never would’ve thought that was an actual thing.”
In fact, investigating applicants to the Maine Warden Service was one of my most important duties. Many people participated in the hiring process—including a psychologist and a polygraph operator—but ultimately, it was my responsibility to prevent an unfit candidate from acquiring a badge and gun.
“Do you mind if I record this?”
Fixico reached for an aluminum tube on the center console, unscrewed the end, and shook out a cigar. “I’d prefer we talk on ‘deep background,’ if you don’t mind.”
“Are you concerned about retribution from the air force?”
He had a laugh that seemed to scrape his vocal cords. “What’re they going to do to me that’s worse than what God dished out? You wouldn’t think it to look at me, but I graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth. I used to be brilliant. The undamaged part of my brain still is. It’s new memories I can’t retain.”
What interested me was the old stuff. “So you and Wheelwright flew EF-111A Ravens in the war?”
“Spark Varks. That’s what we called them. Technically, Tom did the flying, and my job was to fuck with Saddam’s communications, an activity at which I excelled. After I came back from the Gulf, I thought I was headed for a career at a defense contracting firm. Six-figure income, big house outside the Beltway, marry a white woman. The Native American dream.”
He smiled ironically through a cloud of cigar smoke. “None of that has anything to do with Tom Wheelwright. He wasn’t in Las Vegas when my Corvette was T-boned or when I woke from my coma to learn I was being medically retired. Why did Tommy tell you he chose to leave the air force?”
“He said he couldn’t resist the money he was promised to fly Learjets for the 1 Percent.”
“That’s partially true, I suppose. Tom’s always been good at using truthful statements to mislead. Or maybe he’s one of those people who passes polygraphs because they believe their own bullshit.”
“I have all his military records, including his honorable discharge. There’s not a blemish in his file.”
“There wouldn’t be. Pilots are held to different standards. Especially when it comes to reports of inappropriate conduct with the other sex.”
“Why is there no mention of harassment charges?”
“It’s the air force! Where have you been living for the past fifteen years? Tom was encouraged to take early retirement.” Fixico rolled down his window to relieve the fug. “Now you’re thinking, ‘Why should I take the word of a brain-damaged Injun over the United States Air Force?’ Because I can give you names is why. I can point you to the women. But I have a feeling you already believe me.”
He was right on that account.
I tried to lean forward, but my shirt adhered to the upholstery as if with paste. “Last night, you said you were willing to talk about Tom Wheelwright. Today, you gave me the slip. What made you change your mind, Captain?”
“Truth be told, I don’t recall our conversation all that well. As I said, I have a problem forming new memories. But back when Tommy and I were hotshots in the USAF—before my brain injury—I was as cocky as he was. It was the crash that humbled me. Do you know how often I overhear kids asking their moms about the man with the dent in his head? When the world looks at you and sees a freak, you no longer have the luxury of ignoring the truth.”
He absently stroked the moon crater in his forehead.
“But I still haven’t answered your question. What made me change my tune? I realized the significance of Tommy not giving you my name. He was afraid I’d acquired a conscience as a result of my misfortunes, and rightly so. People have been covering for that man his whole life—me included. I decided the time had come for someone to knock the great Wheelwright off his pedestal.”
Alone again in my car, I called the first woman whose name Fixico had given me, a former air force second lieutenant now living outside Omaha, Nebraska.
“How did you find me?” she’d asked with a flutter of panic.
And with that, my job was done.
3
My flight left without me. I may even have watched the plane take off from the freeway where I was stalled in traffic.
The cause of the holdup was a fatality, the second I’d witnessed on the Florida highways. The dead man lay in the median grass with a blanket over him. His wrecked car looked like it had gone through a junkyard compactor. In addition to the usual first responders, I spotted half a dozen white-and-green Border Patrol vehicles.
Unable to do anything except crawl forward, I put in a call to the officer supervising the search for a new chief warden pilot. Major Patrick Shorey had been on the panel that had hired me eight years earlier. His had been a dissenting voice. So of course, he was an unabashed champion of Tom Wheelwright.
“You said this Seminole you interviewed suffered a brain injury?”
“Captain Fixico
