Max Collins: Fly Paper

The captain stood there for a moment, waiting.

Then the boy said, “That’s all I want. Go back and fly your plane. Tell your passengers the situation.”

Which the captain did.

The skyjacker asked Hazel, “I believe you’re working in the tourist-class section, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“My seat is in tourist. I’ll walk back with you.”

So now she was serving drinks, the skyjacker sitting among the chattering, fidgeting passengers like just another victim, giving no indication to anyone he was the villain of the piece.

But when she served Nolan his Scotch, he said, whispering, “It’s the kid in the wig, isn’t it?”

Surprised, Hazel nodded.

“What’s the airline’s policy in a skyjacking?”

“Do what the man says, what else?”

“How does the kid claim he’ll detonate his bomb?”

“He’s got a pocket calculator wired to do it, he says.”

Nolan thought a moment, then said, “I think he’s bluffing. I don’t think he has any bomb on board.”

“We have to assume otherwise,” Hazel said.

“You do,” Nolan said. “But I don’t.”

And a chill ran up her spine. For a moment, for reasons she didn’t wholly understand, she was afraid of her last-afternoon-and-night’s bed partner. For a moment this man calling himself Nolan — though he was flying under the name Ryan, for “business purposes,” he’d told her last night — frightened her far worse than the young skyjacker sitting a few feet away.

By the time the plane landed at the Quad City Airport, most of the passengers were smashed. Common practice during a skyjacking was for flight attendants to serve free drinks to anyone who wanted one, and that included just about everybody on board; the exceptions were sitting in front of Jon and Nolan: a trio of nuns, who looked like they could use a good, stiff drink, at that.

The booze had had its intended calming effect on the passengers, creating an atmosphere not nearly as tense as it might have been. Other factors had also helped lessen the tension, the main one being that the skyjacker had remained anonymous to his fellow travelers, and had not gone about waving a gun and shouting obscenities and generally reminding everybody they were sitting on a flying powder keg. Of course, the tension was there, underneath it all, and if the atmosphere was strangely like a party, it was a less than jolly affair — a going-away party, perhaps, or a bankrupt company’s last Christmas fling.

Even Jon had fallen prey to the free-flowing liquor; he wasn’t much for hard booze, but the role of skyjacking victim was upsetting enough to his nerves for him to gladly switch from Coke to Bourbon and Coke and its soothing, analgesic powers. Jon had downed only two of them so far, but he was feeling the glow. He and Nolan hadn’t spoken much since the news of the plane’s enforced change of destination, and now he glanced at Nolan and regarded his older friend’s expressionless, tightjawed demeanor. He figured Nolan’s stern countenance meant one of the following: either Nolan was pissed off, or was putting together a scheme of some sort, or both.

Anyway, Jon thought, something was wrong. Nolan hadn’t had anything to drink since that first Scotch, which he’d barely finished. That wasn’t like Nolan, turning down free drinks. Turning down free anything.

For some reason, Nolan was taking this skyjack thing very, very hard, and it puzzled Jon.

“Hey,” Jon said, whispering. “This’ll work out all right. What’s the harm? I mean, it got us home quicker, didn’t it?”

Nolan said nothing.

“I agree with you,” Jon continued, “about the kid in the wig. I don’t think he put a bomb on board, either. Or anyway, if he did, I don’t think he’s the type to set it off.”

Nolan was shaking his head now. He looked disappointed.

“Nolan, what’s wrong?”

They were speaking low anyway, because of the holy trio in the seat ahead, but now they lowered their voices to less than whispers, reading each other’s lips, really, a communication just this side of telepathy.

“Don’t you get it?” Nolan said. “Don’t you see it yet?”

“Get what? See what?”

“We’re screwed.”

“Huh?”

“Your pal in the wig, Jon. He’s screwed us. Shoved it in and broke it off.”

“What d’you mean? How are we worse off than anybody else on the plane?”

Nolan took Jon’s almost-empty glass of Bourbon and Coke away from him, set it on the floor, said, “You better stick to straight Coke in the future, kid. You aren’t thinking too clear.”

“I don’t...”

“Okay, Jon. We’re on a skyjacked plane. Now, what’s the best we can hope for? What’s the best thing that can happen in this particular situation?”

“Well, I suppose the best thing that could happen would be for somebody to take that supposedly rewired calculator away from the skyjacker. That would put the plane back in the hands of the good guys, right?”

“Okay. Then what.”

“Everybody rides off into the sunset, I guess. Except for the skyjacker. He goes straight to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred thousand dollars. Right?”

“Half right. The skyjacker isn’t the only one who goes straight to jail and doesn’t collect two hundred thousand dollars.”

“What?” The clouds began to lift inside Jon’s head. “Oh. Oh Jesus.”

“Yeah. Oh Jesus. Even if they could grab this guy before he’s done any damage, the ‘good guys,’ as you call them, would still have to assume there’s a bomb on the plane. Which means the bomb squad’ll be called in and...”

“They’ll fluoroscope all the luggage. Shit. Oh shit. And all our money? All our beautiful money?...”

“We’ll just have to forget it. Best we can hope for is to leave the airport fast as possible, before people start asking embarrassing questions. Hope to Christ they don’t trace the luggage to us. My phony name’ll lead them nowhere, that’s one good thing. You’re using your right name, but your luggage has nothing suspicious in it. I just hope nobody remembers we were traveling together. I hope Hazel’ll cover for us — a little, anyway. I hope a hell of a lot of things, frankly.”

“Jesus, Nolan. We can’t just let all that money go...”

“We have to. I been trying to figure a way to save it, but I can’t find one. That money isn’t the only thing in that damn suitcase, don’t forget.”

“I haven’t forgotten, Nolan. I wish I could, but I haven’t.”

The guns, Jon thought, the goddamn guns.

The two .38s they’d used at the Comforts’. The two .38s they’d used to kill the Comforts. Bad enough to have to try and explain two hundred grand in cash, but two hundred grand in cash and two revolvers, both of which might be traceable to a multiple killing and robbery...

Jon didn’t want to think about it.

“And,” Nolan was saying, “that’s what happens in the best of all possible worlds. The other possibilities are even more depressing. Such as, maybe there is a bomb on board, and the skyjacker gets rattled, and we all get blown to hell, in which case we won’t sweat the money. Or, the guy lets some of us off the plane and keeps some hostages, and then gets rattled, and our money gets blown up. Or the goddamn skyjacking is a success, and the guy gets away, and the bomb squad moves in to work on the plane and... well, it goes on like that. No matter how you figure it, Jon...”

“We’re screwed.”

Hazel was coming down the aisle. She stopped beside them and said, “Now that we’ve landed, he’s having me ask among the passengers for volunteers to be hostages. He’s going to keep ten people on the plane and let the rest go.”