Flat Spin Read Free Page A

looked back.
    Oh, well.
    I took my time tying down the Duck . Over at the commercial terminal, a turboprop taxied in and disgorged its passengers. High overhead, a turkey vulture wheeled unsteadily in the morning air. Two black SUVs drove onto the ramp and parked beside a Dassault Falcon 7X. A large, middle-age woman in sweat pants, who looked very much like Rancho Bonita’s most famous resident, the star of a wildly successful TV talk show and publishing empire, stepped out of the lead SUV. She chatted up one of her personal assistants while others transferred a queen’s procession of designer luggage onto the jet.
    I wanted to yell, “You go, girl!” but somehow restrained myself.
    Had I been able to afford my own personal assistant, I might’ve checked in to see what was next on my busy schedule. Truth was, I needed no reminder to know that I had nothing going the rest of the day. Or the rest of the week, for that matter. I was fresh out of students, with no immediate prospect of any new ones. If I were a religious man, which I’m not, at least not in a conventional sense, I would’ve prayed that my monthly retirement check from Uncle Sugar was waiting in my mailbox when I got home. A breakfast burrito loomed large on my radar, then maybe a nap.
    The last thing on my mind was murder.

T WO
    I t was not yet nine a.m. and already eighty degrees when I walked in off the flight line that morning. Weird weather for early November if you live in North Dakota. Not so weird for the central coast of California.
    Inside Larry Kropf ’s cavernous hangar, where Marine mechanics once toiled over gull-winged Corsair fighters destined for war in the Pacific, it was dank and cool. The place smelled of grease and history. Larry was balanced on a step stool, leaning precariously into the engine compartment of a V-tail Beech. All I could see of him were his elbows and the north end of his ass crack, peeking out the back of his low-riding, navy blue work pants.
    “Somebody’s in your office,” he said without looking up. “Been there awhile.”
    “Did they bring balloons?”
    “Say again?”
    “Publishers Clearing House. I’m a Super Prize finalist. This could be it, Larry. My ship has docked at last.”
    Larry hitched up his pants and descended the stool gingerly, grimacing with each painful step while pushing his Buddy Holly glasses back up his nose with a finger thick as a Wisconsin brat. He was a wide man with furry forearms and a Grizzly Adams beard dense enough to hide small animals. His nose was flat and veined, tenderized by one too many bar fights and far too much tequila. Stretched across his cannonball belly was an oil-smeared gray T-shirt that said, “Guns Don’t Kill People, Postal Workers Do.”
    “Didn’t see no balloons,” he said, rummaging through the drawers of a rolling tool chest stationed beside the Beechcraft’s wing.
    “No balloons? Then screw ’em. I was gonna subscribe to Cat Fancy , up my chances of winning, but they can forget about it now.”
    “Good. Then maybe you can finally pay me that back rent you owe me.”
    “I’ll get you your money, Larry, as soon as I can. You know I’m good for it.”
    “Only thing I know is, you haven’t paid me a dime in two months, Logan. Not to mention that spot weld I done on your exhaust stack and that’s been, what, four months?”
    “Three months. But who’s counting, right?”
    “I got bills to pay, too, OK?” Larry said. “I got a knee needs replacing. I got a kid needs braces. Five grand to get her teeth fixed so when she turns sixteen, I can stay up all night debating whether to take a shotgun to her pimply little prom date after he brings her home four hours late, or de-ball him with a pair of channel locks.”
    “You know, Larry, I’m no psychotherapist, but I believe those would be called issues .”
    “What about the fucking money you owe me, Logan? What about those issues?” He grabbed a socket wrench from the tool cabinet and