Riders on the Storm

Colgan Air Services was set right on the edge of the city limits. It was standard for the kind of business you usually saw attached to larger airports. Here you could rent aircraft, take flight instruction, fuel up, use a hangar, tie down your craft, or even take a nap in a small room Billy Colgan made available.

Billy was a short and short-fused Irisher who had enough hair on his arms to make an ape envious. I’d never seen him in long-sleeved shirts. Maybe all that hair needed to be aired out.

You walked past a row of tied-down small craft to reach a round yellow metal building that housed the office as well as one of two hangars. Billy’s wife Mara was one of the fastest typists I’ve ever seen. She was plain until she smiled. Then she was striking. She paused in her assault on her typewriter keys to see me and smile. Like Billy and all his employees she wore a tan short-sleeved shirt with Colgan Air above the breast pocket.

“Hi, Sam. Billy’ll be glad to see you. He wants his chance to win back that forty dollars he lost last time you and Thibodeau and Father Brogan played poker. But I guess Brogan won even more than you did.”

“He cheated.”

She had a cheerful, bawdy laugh. “Right, Sam. A priest who cheats at poker.”

“He does.”

I’d been trying to convince our revolving group of players that Father Brogan was a cheater since he’d joined us a year ago. They refused to believe it but it was true.

“That’s the kind of talk that’ll send you to hell for sure.”

“I’ve already booked passage.”

She was still smiling. “A priest who cheats at poker,” she said as she raised Billy on the intercom.

Billy came around his desk as if he was going to grab me and throw me to the ground. He was best known to the boys of Catholic school as the all-time arm-wrestling champion. This had started in third grade when he’d beaten a fifth-grader. You didn’t want to be around him when he was drunk because the fun would stop at some point while he insisted that every male in the room arm-wrestle him. Arm-wrestling is interesting for about one minute and four seconds.

“Great t’see ya, Sam. Siddown.”

The flying he’d picked up in high school. It had been called Parker Air then. Billy had convinced old man Parker to let him work here and in between moving planes around, scrubbing toilets, and watching Parker give flying lessons — sometimes to comely young women — he got the fever. No college for him. He got his pilot’s license and started flying cargo out of St. Paul and then when old man Parker decided to retire, Billy managed to get enough of a bank loan to make a serious down payment on the place. Old man Parker had let him pay off the rest from profits.

After we were seated, Billy said, “Poor Will, huh?”

“He didn’t do it.”

Genuine surprise played on his broad face. “You might be the only one who thinks so.”

“There’re some others.”

“I’m getting the sense that this isn’t a social visit.”

“Afraid it isn’t, Billy. I want to know a few things about Lon Anders.”

“You think Anders had something to do with this?”

“I can’t say yes and I can’t say no at this point. That’s why I need to ask you some questions.”

“Before you start, Sam, Anders is a good customer.”

“I just want to ask a couple of simple questions.”

He shrugged. “As long as I don’t think I’m violating a confidence.”

“Fair enough. How often does he fly?”

“About average for my business. Two, three times a month.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Half and half or so. He loves taking his ladies up and scaring the shit out of them. Getting into dives and pretending he’s stalled. Things like that.”

“He ever get in trouble showing off like that?”

“No. But I’ve warned him plenty of times. He’s a good pilot but not a great one. One of these days he’s going to be clowning around like that and not be able to get control back.”

“Ever see him take up Valerie Donovan?”

“Bad question.”

“Cathy Vance?”

“Another bad question.”

“How about where he goes?”

“He’s got a thing about Denver. Shacks up there a lot.”

“Ever leave the country?”

“You sure ask a lot of bad questions.”

“So he does leave the country.”

“You said that, I didn’t. And you’re only guessing.”

“I’m trying to save Will here, Billy.”

Now he waited me out. “Will’s our friend, Billy.”

“Not mine.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He’s never been especially friendly to me, Sam. And I’m talking way, way back. I think it was because of my old man.”

Billy’s old man, along with two other of his Navy buddies from the big war, had stuck up a bank. Even in the Hills that had marked the family as outsiders.

“He ever say anything directly?”

“He didn’t have to, Sam. I’m not exactly an idiot, man. I can tell.”