D. B., page 1
A Novel
Elwood Reid
D O U B L E D A Y
New York London Toronto Sydney Auckland
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Acknowledgments
Also by Elwood Reid
Copyright Page
For the ladies, Nina, Sophia, and Lilliya. And for
Bill Thomas, editorial son of a bitch,
whose input made this a better book.
Maintain character. . . . If you whore, all ideas change.
—from James Boswell's journals
What Happened
November 24, 1971
As the 727 taxied down the rain-damp runway of Portland International, the man in 18C stubbed out his third unfiltered Raleigh and passed a note to the stewardess, a honey blonde named Susan who'd strapped herself into the vacant seat across the aisle.
Anticipating another clumsy come-on, she quickly covered her name tag and took the note, flashing him a polite drop-dead-creep smile. Phone numbers scribbled on the back of business cards, inappropriate comments about her legs, and men ordering Dewar's, splash of soda, without once looking up from her breasts were occupational hazards she'd long since learned to fend off with a diverse arsenal of bitchy half smiles, beverage choice queries, and requests to buckle up and take seats during turbulence. She figured that as soon as the plane hit cruising altitude and she went to roll the drink cart down the aisle she'd just toss the unread note into the trash. But when she examined the intricately folded note and felt its moist edges she knew she had to open it and see what was inside, maybe share the contents with her fellow stewardesses.
It read: I have a bomb in my briefcase and I am prepared to use it.
Her hands shook. She read it again, the words popping inside her brain like tiny mushroom clouds: I have a bomb in my briefcase and I am prepared to use it.
She took another look at the man, sitting cool like Robert Mitchum under a haze of cigarette smoke, Ray-Ban Wayfarers parked on his narrow face. He had on a dark suit and a skinny black tie he'd wrestled into a full Windsor and jabbed with a pearl stickpin. His hair was perfect and for the moment his name was Cooper, Dan Cooper, to be exact.
Susan gathered up the gold cross that hung around her neck on a chain and pressed the cool metal to her chapped lips to stop her hands from shaking. For a brief moment her thoughts drifted to her fiancé, a pipe fitter from Tacoma who'd been after her to quit the airline.
“Do you understand?” Cooper asked, giving her twin reflections of her own terrified eyes in his mirror shades.
She nodded and, like Dorothy in some terrible Oz, tapped gold to enamel three times, hoping for some magic to pull her out of this bad dream. Only nothing happened and she let the cross drop.
“Good,” he said, sitting back and stroking the briefcase on his lap. It occurred to him that there would be no going back, that this aluminum tube with wings slicing through the clouds and mist might be the last thing he saw. And so he sucked in the stale cabin air and lamped the neat rows of seats through the twilight of his shades, taking in the dozens of heads G-forced back and tenderly exposed above the seat cushions like eggs in a carton. The cabin filled with the mindless chatter of people on their way to Seattle anxiously putting words and smoke into the stale air in the hope that it would somehow negate the nagging possibility of a crash or some other disaster—say a duck sucked into the engine or pilot error. He sat, watching and listening to the nervous fraternity of lonely passengers filling the empty space with the ordinary laundry of their lives—the kids away at college, Maytags, the new lettuce diet, the lonely guy at the office who finally got his ashes hauled, Vietnam, breast cancer, Nixon and China, how the new Buicks don't hold a candle against the old Buicks, Muhammad Ali, orthodontia, coffee stains on the stove top, church bake sales, that Jonathan Livingston Seagull book, tax deductions, beer cans left to ring end tables in familiar patterns, heart disease, tax shelters, cheap weekend getaways, Idi Amin, college tuition, gas bills, Evonne Goolagong, UFOs, electric crockpots, lumbago, the wife and kids, and what exactly that song “American Pie” was all about.
As the strange swoon of gravity denied sent a hush through the cabin, Cooper decided to twist the fear blade a little deeper and so he tapped the stewardess on the arm and opened the briefcase. “See,” he said, holding two stripped wires. “I touch these and the shit hits the fan, honey.” The plane skipped and his hands swayed inside the briefcase, the wires almost touching as he eased the lid down.
“I understand,” she mumbled.
“Now I want you to write down what I say and trot it up to the captain so we can get this thing started.”
Her hands trembled as she pulled a pen and drink napkin from her apron and readied herself.
“Okay,” he said. “Now here's what I want. Two hundred thousand in used bills and I want 'em in a knapsack. Two back parachutes, two chest parachutes. After we refuel, passengers go free. No police. Oh, and say takeoff from Seattle by five. You got all that? Good. Now nod that pretty little head of yours and gimme some smile.”
When she'd finished scribbling the message down she nodded, unbuckled, and stood unsteadily, quickly looking around to see if any nearby passengers had heard them. They had not. She was all alone, with the blooming dread of what the man had just so calmly dictated to her. And then there was the note, I have a bomb in my briefcase and I am prepared to use it.
“Go on,” he said. “Hustle up there and bring the note back. I need it for my archives. But first I want you to bring me a highball, plenty of ice.”
She lingered a minute, gawking at him, waiting for some cruel punch line or smile. But none came. He wanted a drink. He had a bomb.
Cooper stared right back, thinking: Boom motherfuckin' boom! He'd always been good at tough thoughts and it worked, because she brought him a highball and then made her way toward the cockpit, rushing past the unsuspecting passengers as the plane punctured the clouds on its way to Seattle.
From his smoky perch in the back of the plane Cooper sipped his drink and got into character, trying to imagine them all dead and scattered into the air, bits and pieces of them seeding clouds, raining down like fertilizer.
BEFORE: THE NAME he'd given at the ticket counter was Dan Cooper. It was not his real name, nor was it his first choice. He'd briefly toyed with Rip or Quint but ruled them out as too memorable, settling finally on Dan Cooper; a name with just the right amount of generic menace. Dan Cooper sounded like the sort of guy who might hijack a plane the day before Thanksgiving and Dan Cooper would have a bomb and he would ask for money and they would give it to him, because on this gray day the man seated in seat 18C calling himself Dan Cooper did not give a shit if he lived or died. He was tired of mediocrity and the long flat road that his life seemed to be speeding down and he had arrived at this plan, as a drowning man flails for a towrope across riptide and chop. The plan was pure, a thing to hone and polish and stick to if deliverance was to be granted, and the minute he'd stepped onto the plane and spotted the unoccupied backseat, he'd steeled himself for the worst that could happen, be it crash or cowardice on his part. That there would be no future for him or anybody else on the plane—no Thanksgiving Day turkey, creamed peas, oyster stew, or ginned-up relatives sleeping in recliners—was of no consequence. Dan Cooper was getting the hell out. End of story or maybe the beginning, depending on how things sorted out.
In the cockpit Susan relayed the message, her voice cracking with every bump and bang of the fuselage as Captain Yount instructed her to look for a gun and note the hijacker's demeanor. “Can you do that for me, Susan? I need you to be my eyes and ears, size him up. We need to know what kind of maniac we're dealing with here.” She nodded, taking comfort in Captain Yount's square-jawed calm as he said, “Be brave, Susan.”
She exited the cockpit and noticed that her knees had stopped quivering and that she was able to meet the passengers' curious stares. But as she neared the back of the plane and saw Cooper waiting for her, hands resting on the briefcase, she felt her heart surge into her throat.
“Are we on?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He plucked the note from her fingers and dropped it into the watery remains of his highball, stirring until it became mush. “No funny stuff this way,” he said, lighting another cigarette.
He knew he had to scare her and so he opened the case and gave her another brief snatch of the coiled wires and batteries and dynamite-looking cylinders strapped inside. “Hell in a box,” he said, still with the crooked grin. He pointed at the seat next to him, motioning her to sit as the engines strained, blanketing the cabin with their drone.
She sat.
And Cooper knew he had her and that his plan would work—it would all work. He would get the money and parachutes and he would disappear. It would be his grand gesture, the last great thing. He pushed up his shirtsleeve and read the rules he'd ballpointed across his wrist.
Be cool.
No guns.
Don't take any shit.
So far so good. The plane continued to climb momentarily over the storm clouds, the cabin filling with bri
Susan rose and Cooper turned on her. “Where do you think you're going?” he said.
She pointed at his glass. “You want another drink, right?”
“Exactly.”
A minute later she returned with another highball and tried to see if he had a gun in his coat or a wedding band on his finger—some telling detail she could report back to Captain Yount about—but her eyes kept returning to the briefcase.
“Tell you what,” he said, lowering his shades. “Trot back up there and tell Captain America I'm not foolin' around here. Tell him we're not landing until the money and chutes are ready. And remember, any funny stuff and we all go to pieces together.”
She nodded and again made the trip to the cockpit, pausing every other aisle to stare into the pool of each passenger's lap as she tried to get a handle on the situation and the possibility that they might all be blown and scattered in the wind. Instead she focused on the little things—pilled seat arms, magazines sliding under seats, and the incredible dandruff of the man in 7B.
Captain Yount was on the radio when she entered the cockpit, his brow now damp with sweat, the copilot too focused on the controls and gauges. Captain Yount told Susan to stay calm, they were doing everything they could to meet the hijacker's demands.
She hurried back and approached Cooper, mustering all her poise only to see it crumble when he looked up at her.
“Well?” Cooper said. “Did they say how long?”
“He wants you to know that we're doing all we can to make this happen,” she said. “He doesn't want anybody to get hurt.”
“That dog don't hunt, sweetcakes. I want my demands met sooner rather than later.” He pinched the Raleigh dead, dropped it into the ashtray, and pulled another from the pack. He motioned for her to light it, saying, “Now, how about giving me some fire.”
She did. Their fingers brushed as she whipped the match away, snapping it with a practiced snap of the wrist.
He took a long pull, let his face leak fresh smoke, and said, “I sure hope we don't have a hero behind the controls.”
Susan told him Captain Yount was a good man who was just trying to do his job.
He pointed for her to sit again.
Two hours later, after circling in a holding pattern, the plane landed in Seattle and taxied down a runway lined with waiting vans, fuel trucks, and luggage tractors. He saw sharpshooters crouched along the terminal roof like bland gargoyles, breathing in between heartbeats, and inside the terminal stood men Cooper figured to be FBI agents, their faces pressed against the aluminum-frame windows, fogging the glass.
After a delay a courier car containing the requested chutes and cash approached the aircraft. As instructed, Susan met the car and transferred the chutes and bag of money, dragging them past the rows of nervous passengers to the back of the plane, where the man in the black suit and Wayfarer shades sat holding his wires, waiting.
“Good work,” Cooper said as Susan dropped the chutes and sack of money. He inspected the chutes quickly and then snapped open the sack and allowed himself a moment of pure gloat as he fingered a brick of twenty-dollar bills. “Okay,” he said, pointing at his fellow passengers. “Get them out of here.”
Susan nodded and went to the cockpit. Minutes later Captain Yount came on the PA system and instructed the passengers to begin deplaning, his voice cool and reassuring.
They rose like churchgoers popping up from pews at the first organ blast of the doxology, clutching at coats, purses, and attaché cases, a few glancing at the man in the back with puzzled expressions and the dim awareness that something bad had happened or was still happening or was about to happen. But as the people in the front of the plane began draining out the door, down the steps, and onto the tarmac, squinting into the lights, even the rubberneckers were pulled out into the damp night as a stewardess wished each of them a happy Thanksgiving. And like that they were gone, leaving the cabin and crew to Cooper and the next phase of his plan.
When the hatch closed and the fuel truck backed away, Cooper gave Susan instructions to relay to the pilot, telling him to chart a course for Mexico City. She looked up and down the empty rows of seats and the small litter of departed passengers before pulling her eyes back to Cooper. “Mexico City's nice,” she said. “It's warm and . . .”
“Goddamn right it's warm,” he said. “And it's not here.” He pointed out the window.
“But why?”
He grinned. “I like that,” he said, tapping the briefcase. “Not too scared to ask questions.”
She frowned, her chin no longer shaking, eyes dim and red. She gave him a tiny nod and he went on. “Now here's how we're gonna do this. I wanna go low—ten thousand feet, no more, no less. I want the flaps at fifteen degrees—fifteen degrees or, hell, I don't need to tell you what's gonna happen.” He pointed at the briefcase, made a little boom sound. “Then I want you back here with me for takeoff. Okay?”
She whispered okay and trotted toward the cockpit, stopping to whisper to the dark-haired flight attendant before parting the first-class curtain and disappearing.
Cooper turned his attention to the chutes, spotting the bad one right away. “Fucking amateurs,” he said, tearing it out and snipping the cords to bind the money sack to him. The others looked good and the money felt nice and heavy—if not two hundred, then close.
Ten minutes later the jet circled back onto the runway, engines firing. Cooper waved good-bye to the rigidly silhouetted John Q. Law types watching him from inside the bright terminal, their hands on radios, just itching to give shoot orders, the very same men who would be looking for him, scouring the land, crawling through the plane dusting for prints, spitballing possible motives, and interviewing oblivious hostages, sifting for that criminal needle in the haystack. He wished them lots of luck.
When he turned around Susan was standing a couple of yards away, broken and awaiting further instruction.
He pointed. She sat. Then the plane muscled off the ground and began its steep climb as Cooper stared out at the smudgy dark blur of lights.
When they had stopped climbing at ten thousand feet he told Susan that he wanted her to clear out of the cabin and go up front with the other gals. She hesitated, pointing at the briefcase containing the bomb.
“You wanna know how it's going to end?”
She nodded.
“I'm about to find out,” Cooper said. “Now trot up there and pull the curtain.”
For a moment he considered letting her in on the joke and telling her that the dynamite was really a couple of old road flares strung together with some colorful phone cable and a radio tube he'd pirated from a twenty-inch RCA he'd found abandoned behind his trailer. But he decided not to. It was best to leave her scared and sure of her own heroism as she vanished behind the first-class curtain like a magician's assistant, trembling with anticipation.
For a few long moments he just looked out the window, enjoying the plane minus the passengers as he replayed the dozens of jumps he'd taken over the humid jungles of Vietnam, a world away from the ocean of fir trees, brush-tangled hills, and twisted creeks of Washington that waited, cold, dark, and wet below. Here it was, he thought, one of those moments in life at which you arrive totally unprepared. But his demands had been met and there was the money and all his tough talk and months of planning. Certainly no going back.
It was time to jump.
When he rose and checked the chutes a second time he felt that dead, sapped-out feeling creep into his legs—the one that had enabled him to jump despite the presence of snipers waiting for him under vine-ridden blinds, ready to shoot his heart out expertly. He would be the dangling man all over again, a piece of meat on a string caught between earth and sky, waiting for the kiss of earth or tree. But this time there would be no gunfire, just the long run to the border, where some new life awaited him.
