Tropical Depression (Billy Knight Thrillers 1)

We were up in the air very fast. I could just see the clutter of Miami Beach out the window, and then we stood on one wing and turned west: west to the setting sun, west to darkness. I turned and looked at the face between me and the window.

I caught her eye again, that warm golden eye. It held me. “So, uh—you’ve been on vacation? In Miami?”

“No, in the Virgin Islands. Miami isn’t my idea of a vacation.”

“Oh, you don’t like automatic weapons?”

“I get enough of that at home,” she said. “I work at a free clinic and believe me, I get plenty of gunshot work.”

I knew the free clinics. They’re a leftover from the power-to-the-people stuff that was always a little more potent in L.A. and San Francisco than back east. Some of the clinics are pretty good.

“Which one?” I asked her. “I used to live in L.A.”

She made a face. “Crenshaw District.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. I started out there all full of idealism and—I don’t know. I’ve been there for five years and things just get a little worse every year. I think I’m ready for a change. In fact, I’ve started looking around for something else, maybe in a nicer place. Maybe someplace tropical. I don’t know.” Her eyes drifted away and she seemed lost for a moment, whether in her past or her future, I couldn’t say.

She snapped out of it abruptly, with another of those glorious smiles.

“Anyway. What about you, Billy? Visiting family in L.A.?”

“No. No, I’m, uh—” I had a little flash of thinking I should try to explain it all to her. The feeling went away. “I just, uh, have some stuff to take care of.”

It seemed like a bad start. But it got better quickly. Maybe I talked too much to make up for the bad start. Maybe she talked too much to keep me from switching seats with the actor. Whatever it was, we filled up three thousand miles with our life stories. She had a brother who was a reporter, her folks lived out in the Valley.

For my part, I left out a lot; marriage, the Rossmore, that kind of thing. But the rest just poured out. I found it easy to be a human being with her. It was something I hadn’t been in a long time.

And far too soon, well before I was ready or thought it was possible, we were sliding down over that red desert, over the last range of mountains, and into LAX.

I leaned over Nancy and looked out the window. The smell of her still made me dizzy—or maybe it was just the plane’s loss of altitude.

It was dusk outside. It always seems to be dusk when you land in L.A. They call it the City of Angels, but that’s just cheap sarcasm. L.A. is the City of Night.

Something about that last approach to LAX always gets to me. You see the red desert, the soft tan and green and gray of the mountains, and suddenly there it is, the biggest man-made sprawl the world has ever known. From the center of the L.A. basin you can drive for an hour in any direction and nothing changes. There is a bank, a gas station, a convenience mart and a mini-mall at every intersection in all that vast spread.

From the air it is a grid of lights that stretches neat and symmetrical for as far as you can see, from the edge of the mountains down to the ocean. The freeways and larger surface streets are lined by pink lights and marked by the thick ribbons of traffic, yellow dots of headlights running one way and red the other.

Even in a jet it takes a long time to cross that huge and foul basin. It seems even longer when you are trying to think of something to say so the flight doesn’t end when the plane lands.

I didn’t want to say so long to Nancy and have it end. But the closer I got to L.A. the more that old feeling of dread closed in. As we went into our final approach I couldn’t think of anything except that double-casket funeral. Out the window I thought I could see the cemetery along Sepulveda. I knew that was stupid, but I thought it anyway.

So the plane taxied up to the terminal and stopped, and the big guy in the next seat lurched off, sulking. The other passengers jammed into the aisle and started shoving for the exits. I looked for something to say, some way to climb out of the cloud that had settled on me as we landed. I couldn’t find it.

Nancy gave it a good long three minutes. She pretended to be watching for an opening in the line of passengers kicking and elbowing past us. She gave me plenty of time to say something to her. I started to say something twice, but I suddenly felt like Jennifer was watching me. The thought paralyzed me. I couldn’t even stand up.

Nancy finally gave up. “Well,” she said firmly, “thanks for a lovely talk.” She stood up. I moved aside to let her out and she grabbed a bag from the bin above our seat. Something witty and endearing was on the tip of my tongue, but it stayed there. She was down the aisle and off the plane and I just sank back into the seat and sat there.

I watched her go. She moved carefully up the aisle, and just before turning left off the plane she looked back at me with a brief, unreadable expression. Then she was gone.

I just sat for three or four minutes. There was no one else left on the plane. I thought I had felt bad when I was trying to talk to her. Suddenly I felt much worse. I grabbed my bag and pushed off the plane, pretty sure I’d just blown some kind of last chance.

The feeling grew on me as I walked into the terminal. LAX is one of the biggest and most modern airports in the world. It always makes me feel fat, cheap, and guilty of something. But this time I didn’t pause to watch the anorexic fur-bearing bimbos in their leather jeans. I hurried, just short of running, all the way down the long corridor. I took the escalator two steps at a

time.

I found her again outside baggage claim. She had crossed over to the traffic island. One brown canvas bag with leather straps was beside her on the pavement. She was about to climb into a blue van with gold lettering on the side saying SUPER SHUTTLE. The electronic destination sign on the front of the van said WILSHIRE DISTRICT in letters made of yellow dots.