Too Many Murders(125)
Holloman’s little airport lay behind chain-link fencing on the west arm of the Harbor, which was part industrial wasteland and part working factories. Between it and the perpetually humming artery that was I-95 reared the clusters of tall cylindrical tanks holding every kind of petroleum-based fuel from aviation gasoline to diesel and heating oil.
Instead of using I-95 for such a short run, Carmine drove along the waterfront dockland, past the fuel farm, and so, finally, turned through the open airport gate onto a concrete apron used as a parking lot. He crossed it and swung around behind the upmarket shed that served Holloman’s commuters as a terminal, his eyes absorbing their first sight of a Lear jet. Disappointingly small, it sat not far from the shed in the glory of flawless white paint, the Cornucopia horn-of-plenty logo emblazoned on its tail.
A rap on his passenger-side window made Carmine jump. Corey opened the door and slid in, coat streaming.
“You’re wet, Corey!”
“It’s wet, Carmine! Sorry, but I had to hide my wheels. No choice except to run through the rain. I figured you’d cruise by to take a look. What d’you think? Squeezing into that must be like going inside a tube of toothpaste. Doesn’t look as if they’d be able to stand up, though I guess they can in a central aisle. Give me a train any day.”
“It’s a power thing, Corey. They can spit on the peasants being herded like cattle. Have you been here all night?”
“Didn’t need to. They weren’t going anywhere in that storm. They mightn’t be going anywhere today if the rain doesn’t stop.”
“What do you hope to find?” Carmine asked curiously.
The long, dark, beaky face screwed up, the dark eyes narrowed. “I wish I knew! It’s just a feeling I have, boss. Something’s in the wind—or the rain, or the sea spray. I don’t know.”
“I’ll send someone over with a bacon roll and a thermos of coffee. In an unmarked, over by that hangar,” Carmine said. “Go with your hunches, Corey.”
And what do you think about that? he asked himself as he drove away. Corey’s found his own case. The fact that nothing’s going to come of it is beside the point. It should have occurred to me that the Cornucopia bunch are sneaky enough to aim for an earlier departure.
Two bacon rolls and a thermos of coffee were most welcome. Warm and relatively dry, Corey Marshall settled to spend a few boring hours of waiting. The windows of his car were cranked down just enough to prevent his windshield fogging up, and he was cunningly situated where he couldn’t be seen, yet could see in all directions. The rain had steadied, neither pouring down nor sprinkling, and it had been falling now for eight hours. The ground was hard even where it was exposed; between that, the big areas of concrete, and some patches of tar-seal, runoff was copious. On the road outside the airport gate a section of the bed had sagged and crumbled, plugging up a drain grating and causing the water to pool fairly deeply. Lovely weather for ducks, thought Corey, trying to find interest in everything. He had to stay awake, but more than that: he had to stay alert.
A great deal of his time was occupied in thinking about the lieutenancy and, he had come to realize with a sinking horror, a marriage that hadn’t panned out the way he had envisioned. Oh, he loved Maureen and more than loved his two children, who seemed to suffer from Maureen’s deficiencies even more than he did; he pitied them, an awful emotion for a father to feel. He understood that a person’s nature was a given, but he wished with all his heart that Maureen’s nature was less avaricious, less scratchy. His daughter, nine years old, had worked out how to keep out of trouble, mainly by effacing herself, whereas his son, now twelve, was beginning to inherit his mother’s frustrations at the world of men. Always in trouble for untidiness, loudness, poor grades at school. It had come to a head a couple of weeks earlier, and he had hoped that, recalled to a sense of her own imperfections, Maureen would let up on the two males in her home. And she had—for a week. Now it was drifting back to where it usually was.
In his heart of hearts he knew that divorce was inevitable, for he knew that even if he did get Larry Pisano’s job, Maureen would find something fresh to pick about. A clunky second car, an unsatisfactory kitchen, Gary’s acne due to eating junk food—what the raise in pay wouldn’t stretch to fix, she would nag about. Not for any other reason than that she was permanently discontented, and how could you fix that? If it weren’t for the kids he would file for divorce tomorrow, but for the sake of the kids he couldn’t do that, ever. No fool, he knew that they loved him as the bearable side of their home life, their coconspirator and ally. In a war?