NightSide

"Two-two heavy, rolling." She advanced the throttles to take off power and kept the aircraft on the centerline while Douglas called out power and speeds –

"V-one...and...rotate!"

The "Trip-seven" lifted and at seven degrees nose-up began climbing, Richardson scanning the instruments. "Positive rate, gear up," she called out, and Douglas lifted the lever, raising the landing gears.

"Two-two heavy, turn left two three five degrees to KIRAA, clear to BLZZR at four thousand, contact departure on one three three point zero."

"Three three zero," Douglas said as she switched COMMs and checked in with air traffic control.

Richardson keyed in rates and headings and cut in the autopilot, then she scanned the instruments while they climbed out towards Hartford. "Hydraulic pressure still looks good on two," she said, and Douglas grunted a quick "Okay, got it."

"Two-two heavy, traffic at your ten o'clock, four miles, three thousand and descending."

"Two-two heavy, got him," Richardson replied to ATC. They entered a layer of solid cloud, hit mild turbulence as they flew through the seemingly impenetrable gray, then broke out into sunshine and a 'bluebirds' sky – clear, and not a cloud in the sky ahead. With high pressure moving in from Baja through the southwest, they'd have a strong jet stream to contend after they crossed the Mississippi, but other than that a hopefully non-eventful flight...

+++++

It had been a bad night, Lakwan knew.

First, they'd tried to hit a liquor store but the old Korean dude behind the counter had been armed, so was his kid – who'd been working in the walk-in refrigerator when they came in, and what followed had been a blood-bath. Five of his brothers had walked in the store with guns drawn, and the old man stood back from the counter, hitting the silent alarm before he put his hands up. Then the boy had come out of the walk-in with a Remington 870 pump and got three rounds of double-o buckshot off, hitting Soultrain in the chest and legs before he'd turned and shot the kid. By then, the old man had some kind of hand-cannon up and started shooting, hitting Soultrain in the face, the his little brother Markus got it in the main pump. Both had fallen to the bloody tile floor just as he heard sirens only a few blocks away.

They'd 'jacked a car and took off down Sepulveda, slipped into the 'hood and dumped the car a few blocks from his crib, then the three remaining brothers walked to their house and crashed for a while. Still, Lakwan couldn't sleep and he was still buzzed from killing the Korean kid – and he remembered the shocked look in the kid's eyes when he knew he'd been hit. He heard Laqeesha knocking around in the other bedroom and went to see what she was up to, and he looked at her in the early morning light when he walked in the room. She was wiping her neck with an alcohol pad, then slipped the H into a vein in her neck and slipped back on the bed, the syringe still dangling from her neck. Lakwan shook his head, went over and pulled the needle out and wiped her skin with the pad, but she had spread her legs wide now and was rubbing her clit. He was hard in a flash and put his face between her legs, and they spent the next few hours fucking and sucking, and he finally shot his load up her ass – her favorite way to end this particular game – and his, too.

He looked around the room now that the sun was coming up, and he could barely remember the Korean kid now, but he knew they were going to need some flash in a hurry, 'cause the girls were already running low on H.

Still...he'd been watching a bank over in Culver City for a few days now, and he had a plan...

+++++

Ralph Richardson got back to the house after dropping Dana off at school, and he walked into the kitchen, finished the dishes then walked to their bedroom and cleaned-up that room before he went to Dana's and picked up her dirty clothes. He went to the living room and turned on the television, found an old movie on cable and sat quietly, watching John Wayne and Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson outsmart the bad guys one more time. He picked at his fingers from time to time, leaned forward and put his face in his hands, then walked to the kitchen, looked in the cabinet over the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of bourbon.

He held it in his hand, looked at the cinnamon colored liquid in the bottle as he rolled it round and round, then he took it to the garage and threw it in the trash. He went back to the kitchen cabinet and grabbed every bottle he could, then carried them all to the trash. He went round the house, found every bottle he'd stashed over the last few months and dumped those too, and by the time he'd finished his hands were shaking, his heart pounding in his chest, burning ripples coursing through his forehead. He sat and rubbed his forehead again, his wringing hands mimed the poetry of despair, and he could see it in his mind again...walking to the garage, pulling bottle after bottle out and fixing a strong one...then there was Dean Martin's 'Dude' confronting his own demons in the bottle and everything was clear. He had to – just stop. Bring this part of his life to an end. Move on from self-pity, move back into the light of his love for Laura and Dana, because if he didn't...

He heard the phone ringing and muted the TV as he walked into the kitchen.

"Hello?"

"Ralph Richardson? My name is..."

And it turned out that Goldman Sachs had received his resume and wanted to talk with him. Would today work out? Say in about two hours?

He was dressed and out the door fifteen minutes later...

+++++

"What do we have for grub?" Richardson asked as she looked at the outside air temp, then the cabin temp. She checked the auto-temp panel once again, after one of the flight attendants called to report the last ten rows in coach seemed colder than usual.

"Sandwiches, and, uh, well, it looks like sushi," Douglas said.

"Sushi? You gotta be kidding me... Like what?"

"Looks like California rolls, maybe salmon and tuna sashimi."

"Jesus, is nothing sacred?" she said, almost laughing but still shocked. "Where's my moldy tuna sandwich when I really need it?"

Douglas pulled the sandwich out, looked it over. "I think you're in luck. It's not green yet, though."

"Ah, sweet. Let me have it."

"You don't like sushi?"

"Me? Hell no, I love sushi, just not sushi made at Logan, and probably a week ago, too." She unwrapped the sandwich and gave it a sniff. "This sandwich, on the other hand, was probably made last August. It's had time to percolate, get real potent."

"It smells...potent," Douglas said as she took a piece of sashimi and held it up to her nose. She threw it back in the sack, took the other tuna sandwich. "I think they prepared that fish back in August, too." She shook her head, bit into the sandwich. "Not too bad," she said, shaking her head. "Kind of like a panty-liner, ya know?"

"It's the mercury," Richardson said. "No self-respecting bacteria would dare hang out in a sandwich like this."

"I hope you're right...oh, St Louis coming up on the left."

Richardson looked down at the city, could see downtown and the river gleaming in the sunrise. She switched on the intercom. "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Richardson up on the flight-deck, and those of you on the left side of the cabin can look down in about a minute and see downtown St Louis, Missouri. There's some sun on the river, but if you look close you'll just be able to make out the Gateway Arch. By the way, we're currently at thirty four thousand feet and we're looking good to make our scheduled arrival time of 12:45. The air's still pretty smooth up here but we ask that you keep your seat belts fastened as we're expecting some rough air over Colorado and southern Utah. We'll pass just north of the Grand Canyon in about two hours, and if it looks like we'll be able to see it, I'll let you know."

She switched from intercom back to COMMs and finished her sandwich. "I wish they'd pack Tums with these goddamn things."

Douglas belched, handed her a can of raspberry flavored seltzer water. "This might help."

"No Dr Pepper?"

"Nope."

"Fuck."

"Yup. What's going on with Ralph? Anything new?"

She shook her head. "Nope. SSDD."

"Oh? Well, how's Dana doing?"

"Really good. Piano recital this Friday evening, and she's doing really well. You ought to come."

"Yeah? Sounds good. She have a boyfriend yet?"

"Oh hell yes. Non-stop calls, and now she wants her own phone."

Douglas sighed. "And so it begins. The Wonder Years!"

"Oh...shut up!" They both laughed.

"Two-two heavy, St Louis center."

"Center, go ahead," Douglas said.

"Two-two heavy, traffic at your eleven o'clock is an American MD80, he'll pass under you at flight level three three."

Richardson looked down, nodded her head. "Yup."

"Two-two heavy, okay, we got him. Thanks."

"Two-two heavy, good day, contact Kansas City center on one two one one."

"Two-two heavy, twenty one one," Douglas repeated. "Looks like some weather up there."

Richardson changed the range scale on the weather radar. "Big stuff for this time of year. We ought to pass south of it, though."

"Okay."

She drifted off for a moment, drifted back to the dream...

...to the lamppost, glowing in the mist, lighting her way through the gloom...

...then she appeared, every night in every dream, right here, right now...

...the woman in the cape turned and looked at her, beckoned her to follow...

...and following the woman through more lamps in the mist, soon she came to the stairway...

"Captain?!"

"Hm-m, what?"

"I said, should we ask to divert south a little, away from that cell?"

Richardson looked at the display, wondered how long she'd been out, then called Kansas City...

+++++

Ralph walked out of the interview feeling almost ecstatic, better than he had in months, anyway. One of his friends from Lehman was already onboard and had put in a good word for him; they'd check references and give him a call next week. If there were no problems, could he start next Friday?

Could he start next Friday? Hell, he'd wanted to kiss that prickly-assed son of a bitch, and now he just couldn't believe it. Could it really happen? In the middle of this wicked downturn? Shit! He was the luckiest man alive!

He took the T from the Prudential Center back through downtown, then switched to the Red Line and rode out past Cambridge. He found his car now had about four inches of snow on top and started the motor, set the defrost to MAX and went around the outside brushing off snow, chipping ice off the door glass. His hands freezing, he got in and drove through the slush and ice to Dana's school, but he was early, so he reclined the seat and snoozed...until he heard her tapping on the glass.

He jerked awake, flipped the switch to unlock the doors and she hopped in...

And she looked at him, the question in her eyes easy to see.

"Why're you so dressed up?"

He looked at her, grinning. "Job interview today. It went well, I think."

She smiled, wasn't quite old enough to know what this really meant, but she seemed happy nonetheless. "Way to go, Dad!" She held up her hand and they 'high-fived', then they both laughed the laugh that had held them together through all the good times – and the bad.

"Home first, then pizza?" he asked, grinning that grin she'd missed for months.

"You know, I'm really hungry. Think they're open yet?"

"They will be by the time we get there. It's home made root beet night, remember?"

"Ooh, right on!"

They laughed and talked about her day as he pulled out into traffic, and they made it to Gino's in time to be the first ones seated. A house special pie and two pitchers of root beer later they were deep in the zone, as happy as they'd been in months...

+++++

Dana Goodman sat at her desk, looking at the list of names on her screen. Dozens of names, many of them friends, friends she'd hired. All of them would be laid off in the next few days, by Friday at the latest. And it was her job to get it done "in a timely and expeditious manner."

She stood and walked to her office's wall of tinted glass and looked out over Beverly Hills, and the Hollywood Hills beyond, lost in thought. Lost in her life's choices, the choices that had carried her from Minnesota to Israel, then she followed death back to America, to California, to Los Angeles. Where her life, she laughed, had begun.

It had all started that night in Zermatt. Killing six men, five Iranians and an American, had burned a hole in her soul, yet it had taken months for the searing pain to reach her consciousness. In the end, a telephone call in the middle of the night shattered that dream and changed her course.

Her mother called that night, told her that her father had just suffered his second heart attack, and this one had been bad. Could she come home?

She asked for a leave from her superiors in Mossad and flown home, and echoes of the dream chased her through the time zones. She spent the last few days of her father's life in his hospital room at the Mayo Clinic, and she was with him – and held him – as he passed. She'd looked in his eyes, watched the humanity in his soul flicker as he took his last breaths, and she'd wiped the tears first from his eyes – then her own – as he left her, as his eyes grew calm and still.

She'd spent the next week at his house in Westwood Hills, on the west side of Minneapolis, and she'd looked out over the golf course and walked the trails around the lake while trying to come to terms with his passing, but in the end very little about her life made sense anymore. She thrashed around in her memories, trying to understand just what she'd been rebelling against all those dreadful years ago. He didn't like the Beatles? Let's have a fight about that. Jim Taylor wasn't Jewish, so let's go out with him, see if we can rub that in his face too. It always came back in a rush, but when her mother asked her to help clean out the closet where he'd keep his clothes, and the little boxes where he'd kept his memories, she'd come undone.

Then her kid sister arrived, a few days too late for the passing but just in time for the services. Laura was the late arrival in so many other ways, too. Dana was finishing middle school when Laura was born, and she'd gone off to college before the kid had gotten out of kindergarten. By the time Laura had moved on to the very same middle school over in St Louis Park, she'd moved to Israel.

So the funny thing was, they simply didn't know one another. Two sisters, her flesh and blood, and they'd never once had a chance to sit around and laugh about boyfriends or argue about chores not done...no, they were strangers, complete strangers. And when she drove Laura home from the airport that fact more than any other hit her the hardest. Her father gone, her mother lost in a haze of grief, and here was this girl home from college, her sister, this total stranger. She'd pulled off the highway and had cried when it all the heartbreak came pouring in.

And someway, somehow, against all odds her sister became her best friend over the next two weeks, and suddenly nothing in the world was as important to Dana Goodman as family.

Now she was in LA, a million miles away. Still, Laura flew out twice a week when she had the LA run, and now she looked at her watch, checked her appointments calendar. Laura's flight was due to arrive in a little less than an hour, and she was planning to meet her later that afternoon for an early dinner. Laura wanted to talk about Ralph, what to do about her marriage now that it seemed to be in a terminal decline – as she put it yesterday. Dana hated to hear it, hated what a split would surely do to her niece, what it would mean for Laura to lose faith in her husband after nearly twenty years together...

This was an evening she wasn't looking forward to, then she turned and went over the list of friends whose lives she was about to destroy.

+++++

Lakwan looked at the foot-traffic in and out of the bank, then at the clock on the dash. The armored car should be here anytime, he told his boys. He looked around the street once again.

Good, he said to himself, still no cops...

+++++

"Two-two heavy, Los Angeles Approach, maintain two four niner degrees, descend and maintain thirty seven hundred, report passing SHELL. Winds light and variable, visibility two miles in moderate haze, altimeter two niner niner two. Contact tower one three three point niner."

"Two-two heavy, maintain two four niner degrees, descend and maintain thirty seven hundred, report passing SHELL," Richardson said. Douglas was handling the landing while she called out the checklists and handled the radios. She could see the tops of a few of the taller buildings downtown poking up through the smog – still maybe fifteen miles away – and she scowled at the bronze colored air blanketing the city. Her eyes were already beginning to burn, and she knew within an hour she'd be on eyedrops, and her throat would be burning...

She scanned the panel, looked as ILS flags popped on the HSI and as the autopilot locked on to the glide-slope and localizer...

"Flaps ten," Douglas said, and Richardson hit the lever under her right hand and watched the panel indicator.

"Ten, and speed one seven five," she said as the 777 drifted down into the smog...

+++++

"Okay man, there it is," Lakwan said as the armored car turned into the shopping center's parking lot. He started his car and watched as the truck drove up to the bank, looked on as the two men in the back of the truck walked inside the bank. He looked at the clock again. "Usually in there less than two minutes," he said. "When they come out we roll, hit 'em just as they get to the back of the truck..."

"Well, you better start rollin', mother fucker," BigTop said, "'cause here they come!"

"Fuck..." Lakwan sped through the lot and screeched to a stop just in time; the brothers raced out of their car with guns drawn and shot the guards before they could react. Lakwan threw a Molotov cocktail under the engine and the pavement under the truck burst into flames. He dashed to the fallen men and grabbed the bags they'd been carrying out to the truck; one went for his gun and Lakwan shot him in the face then he ran back to the car. They were just getting in the car when a gunshot shattered the rear window, and he heard sirens as pulled out into traffic on Manchester. Traffic was heavy as he slipped through the cars; he looked in his rearview mirror, saw red and blue strobes a couple of blocks behind...

He couldn't see the LAPD helicopter overhead, or the KLAX News JetRanger just a few hundred yards behind, but then BigTop leaned out the window and took a shot at the cops.

"Man, they's a helicopter up there, 'Kwan. Better find some trees or some shit, fast..."

Lakwan saw the Salvation Army store just ahead and turned south on Vermont, just before he saw the cop car heading north. He passed it southbound, and BigTop fired two shots at the cop as they passed...

+++++

"Two-two heavy, LA center, be advised there are police helicopters at your eleven o'clock, report in a pursuit, bank robbery, shots fired. They're about a mile north of your position heading east, about two hundred feet AGL."

"Two-two heavy," Douglas said, concern in her voice as she looked down and to the right, "too much haze, can't see any traffic." She looked at Richardson... "You'd better take it..."

"My aircraft," Laura said immediately. She understood, didn't need to be told why. She had zero view out that side of the cockpit, while Katie had an unobstructed view, and she started scanning her instruments, watching the autopilot's moves. She dialed 157 knots on the auto-throttle and dropped the flaps to twenty degrees...