The Summons Read Free Page B

Maple Run in nine years. He had visited the Judge once in the hospital,after a heart attack when the doctors rounded up the family. Surprisingly, he’d been sober then. “Fifty-two days, Bro,” he’d whispered proudly to Ray as they huddled in the ICU corridor. He was a walking scoreboard when rehab was working.
    If the Judge had plans to include Forrest in his estate, no one would have been more surprised than Forrest. But with the chance that money or assets were about to change hands, Forrest would be there looking for crumbs and leftovers.
    Over the New River Gorge near Beckley West Virginia, Ray turned around and headed back. Though flying cost less than professional therapy, it wasn’t cheap. The meter was ticking. If he won the lottery, he would buy the Bonanza and fly everywhere. He was due a sabbatical in a couple of years, a respite from the rigors of academic life. He’d be expected to finish his eight-hundred-page brick on monopolies, and there was an even chance that that might happen. His dream, though, was to lease a Bonanza and disappear into the skies.
    Twelve miles west of the airport, he called the tower and was directed to enter the traffic pattern. The wind was light and variable, the landing would be a cinch. On final approach, with the runway a mile away and fifteen hundred feet down, and Ray and his little Cessna gliding at a perfect descent, another pilot came on the radio. He checked in with the controller as “Challenger-two-four-four-delta-mike,” and he was fifteen miles to the north. The tower cleared him to land, number two behind Cessna traffic.
    Ray pushed aside thoughts of the other aircraft long enough to make a textbook landing, then turned off the runway and began taxiing to the ramp.
    A Challenger is a Canadian-built private jet that seats eight to fifteen, depending on the configuration. It will fly from New York to Paris, nonstop, in splendid style, with its own flight attendant serving drinks and meals. A new one sells for somewhere around twenty-five million dollars, depending on the endless list of options.
    The 244DM was owned by Lew the Liquidator, who’d pinched it out of one of the many hapless companies he’d raided and fleeced. Ray watched it land behind him, and for a second he hoped it would crash and burn right there on the runway, so he could enjoy the show. It did not, and as it sped along the taxiway toward the private terminal, Ray was suddenly in a tight spot.
    He’d seen Vicki twice in the years since their divorce, and he certainly didn’t want to see her now, not with him in a twenty-year-old Cessna while she bounded down the stairway of her gold-plated jet. Maybe she wasn’t on board. Maybe it was just Lew Rodowski returning from yet another raid.
    Ray cut the fuel mixture, the engine died, and as the Challenger moved closer to him he began to sink as low as possible in his captain’s seat.
    By the time it rolled to a stop, less than a hundred feet from where Ray was hiding, a shiny black Suburban had wheeled out onto the ramp, a little too fast, lights on, as if royalty had arrived in Charlottesville.Two young men in matching green shirts and khaki shorts jumped out, ready to receive the Liquidator and whoever else might be on board. The Challenger’s door opened, the steps came down, and Ray, peeking above his instrument deck with a complete view, watched with fascination as one of the pilots came down first, carrying two large shopping bags.
    Then Vicki, with the twins. They were two years old now, Simmons and Ripley, poor children given genderless last names as first names because their mother was an idiot and their father had already sired nine others before them and probably didn’t care what they were called. They were boys, Ray knew that much for sure because he’d watched the vitals in the local paper—births, deaths, burglaries, etc. They were born at Martha Jefferson Hospital seven weeks and three days after the Atlees’ no-fault divorce