Max Collins - Fly Paper

“What about him?”

“Isn’t that a wig he’s wearing? Take a look. That isn’t his hair, is it?”

“Maybe not,” Nolan admitted. “So what?”

“Well, it just seems strange to me, a young guy like that, wearing a wig.”

Nolan shrugged.

So Jon shrugged it off, too; maybe the kid was prematurely bald or something. Like the paunch. Weird, though — young guy with no fat on him elsewhere, no hint of a double-chin, and here he has a gut on him.

Jon stepped up and smiled at the two security guards, both of whom were pretty and blonde, and allowed his brown briefcase to be slid into the X-ray. Then he and Nolan stepped through the doorlike framework that was the metal detector. On the other side Jon picked up his briefcase of comics, wondering offhand if X-rays had a negative effect on pulp paper.

They climbed the covered umbilical ramp to the plane, boarded, and were met by the flight attendant Nolan had met at the hotel. She was a knockout brunette who, for some reason, looked vaguely familiar to Jon. She gave him a brief, similar where-have-I-seen-you-before look, and then she and Nolan traded longer looks of a different sort, Nolan saying, “Morning, Hazel.”

“Good morning, Mr. Ryan,” she said, and she and Nolan made eyes for a second. It was damn near embarrassing.

They passed through the forward, first-class compartment and past the central galley, where the fourth and final flight attendant (a dishwater blonde not quite as attractive as the others) was already fussing with filling plastic cups with ice. They continued on into the tourist cabin, where they took the very last seats in the rear of the plane, near the tail. Only a few people were on board as yet, but Jon and Nolan had been toward the front of the metal-detector line, and the plane was going to be close to capacity.

Jon was having problems with the briefcase: it was so jammed full of comics and stuff, he hadn’t been able to get it shut again, since the security guard checked it. He was struggling with it in his seat, and it got away from him and flopped out into the aisle, in the path of another passenger.

It was the kid in the wig, still lugging his Radio Shack sack.

The contents of Jon’s case were scattered in the aisle, and Jon and the guy in the wig bent over and began picking the books up.

“I’ve got some of these,” the guy said, holding up a Buck Rogers Big Little Book. He had a soft voice, or at least was speaking in a soft voice. He seemed almost shy.

“Really? You a collector, too?”

“No. I read them as a kid.”

“You don’t look that old.”

“They were my older brother’s.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for the help.”

“Hope I didn’t damage them or anything.”

“Never mind. My stupid fault.”

The guy in the wig smiled a little — a very little — and went on toward the rest rooms in back of Jon and Nolan’s seat. He stepped inside the first one.

“Must be nervous,” Jon said. “Plane isn’t even off the ground and he’s going to the can already.”

Nolan hadn’t been paying much attention. “Maybe it’s his first flight,” he said.

Nolan looked out the double-paned window as the Detroit airport flowed by, the plane beginning to make its move down the taxiway. Above him, the little air vent was blowing its stale, recycled air down into his face and, as he looked up to turn it away from him, he noticed the FASTEN SEATBELTS and NO SMOKING signs flash on in red letters, and he buckled up. About that time, Hazel’s voice came over the tinny intercom and reminded anyone who hadn’t yet complied with those two requests that now was the time.

He didn’t really like planes that much, didn’t care for flying. He didn’t feel in control on a plane and preferred traveling by car, where he himself could be behind the wheel. Years ago, he had traveled by train fairly often, but train service in this country had gone to hell, and buses were a pain in the ass and slower than walking. So he was adjusting, finally, to the jet age, despite his firm belief that if God had wanted men to fly, he’d have given them parachutes.

They had the three-abreast seat to themselves, though the unused third was presently being taken up by the briefcase of comic book crap that Jon had lugged aboard. Right now, the cabin pressure was making its abrupt increase, and Jon was making faces, swallowing as he popped his ears. Nolan did the same, with less facial contortion.

Hazel’s voice came on the intercom again, while two of the other flight attendants stood, one at the front of the tourist compartment and the other halfway down the aisle, going through the oxygen-mask-and-emergency-exit ballet to the accompaniment of Hazel’s narration. When that was over, one of the flight attendants came walking down, checking to see if all smokes were out and seat belts fastened, and when she came to Jon and Nolan, she asked Jon to please put his briefcase under the seat in front of him. Jon explained that it wouldn’t fit under there, and she took it away from him, paying no heed to his protests, and put it in a closet compartment opposite the rest rooms that were right behind them.

For a while, Jon sat there, looking like a kid whose favorite toy got taken away. Then he said, “Nolan.”

“What.”

“Get a load of that.”

The kid who’d collided with Jon’s briefcase of comic books a few minutes before, the same kid Jon had noticed was wearing a wig, had come out of the john from behind them and was now heading back up the aisle.

“Get a load of what, Jon?”

“That kid in the green shirt.”

“What about him?”

“That isn’t his stomach.”

“What?”

“He’s got something under his shirt.”

“No kidding.”

“No, really, Nolan, something bugs me about that guy. Why’s he playing dress-up? Wearing that wig. Carrying something under his shirt.”

“Maybe it’s old comic books.”

“You can laugh if you want to, but that’s a weird kid, take it from me... and don’t say ‘takes one to know one.’”

“Would I say that?”

“You’d think it.”

“You got me there.”

The plane had stopped now, having reached the end of the taxiway, and out the window Nolan watched a DC-8 land, bouncing twice on its motionless tires, making blue smoke as rubber met concrete, and then settling down. The soft throb of the 727 jets began to build as the plane started to move, picking up speed fast, shoving Nolan and Jon back in their seats. The nose of the plane lifted, and they headed for the gray sky, Detroit slipping away rapidly under them.

The seat belt and no-smoking sign soon winked off, and Nolan loosened his seat belt but left it buckled. The captain’s voice came out of the intercom and went into the standard flying-at-assigned-altitude-and-estimated-time-of-arrival spiel. According to the captain, the overcast day would be turning into rain here and there up ahead, but he anticipated smooth flying nevertheless. Sure.

On the whole Nolan was pleased with the way things had worked out at the Comforts. Maybe pleased wasn’t the word — more like satisfied . The take had been over two hundred thousand (he hadn’t counted it, except for a fast shuffle through the strongbox of cash), and they’d got out with their asses intact, in spite of the foul-up. What more could he ask?

It was, of course, unfortunate that Jon had had to shoot a man; but something like that was bound to happen sooner or later, and the kid had been exposed to the rough side of the business before, so it wasn’t like he’d been a complete virgin. Last night, what had happened had left Jon silent and shocked, but today he was as talkative as ever, and seemed only slightly depressed. And sleepy. Nolan would bet his share of the take that the kid hadn’t slept more than a couple hours, at most.