“Wooo,” Macovich replied, shaking his head. “Glad he ain’t my dentist. Now, listen here. I think it would be smart if you folks out here calmed down and let that dentist go on home to his family. What good is it doing to be hiding him somewhere? The rest of Virginia don’t I want no trouble with you Tangierians.”
Mattie’s eyes narrowed and she sucked in her bottom lip as she smacked the cash drawer shut.
“The gov’ner don’t want no hassle with you folks, either,” Macovich continued as blue crabs clattered and a trout flopped in the bottom of the white plastic bucket. “I mean, I could just start breaking down doors until I found the dentist and then lock up every last one of you, but I’m being nice about it. And ‘sides, I need to get this seafood on back to the gov’ner before it dies ’cause the First Lady don’t like dead fresh seafood.”
Macovich had at least tried to mediate, he thought as he shut down the helicopter back at the hangar and noticed a hard-looking youth who was dressed like a member of a NASCAR pit crew and talking on a cell phone.
“He’s here,” Cat was telling Smoke.
“Who is? It’d better be good, you waking me up in the middle of the afternoon.”
“That big black mother cop. He just landed in the chopper.”
“No shit?” Smoke was instantly alert. “Well, just get your ass over there and take that lesson, and why isn’t Possum there instead of you?”
“He working on something in his room,” Cat said.
“I’m going to kick his ass,” Smoke groggily said as he rolled over and went back to sleep.
Cat casually strutted toward the helicopter Macovich was refueling with a big hose attached to an Exxon truck with JET-A in large letters on it. Cat buttoned up his NASCAR windbreaker and pulled a NASCAR cap low over his eyes, grateful he had gone to every race at the Richmond International Raceway and had already been well supplied with NASCAR memorabilia–such as clothing, cigarette lighters, posters, mugs, pens, and air fresheners for the rearview mirror–long before he knew these items might be important to his work.
Macovich watched the NASCAR man walking toward him and got excited. What he wouldn’t give to be part of a NASCAR pit crew! This guy looked like the right stuff: swaggering, rough, strong but small enough to fit inside a stock car. He was smoking a Winston and wearing dark glasses and probably had a beautiful sexy blonde waiting for him at home.
“I’m here on orders of my driver, whose name you still can’t know,” Cat said, flipping open a colorful lighter with Winston Cup and Jeff Burton’s signature on it. “Let’s get started.”
“Get started doin’ what?” Macovich eyed the lighter with envy and wondered if the white driver with dreadlocks he met last night might be Jeff Burton in disguise.
“Teaching me to fly.” Cat fondled the lighter and took his time firing it up, a cigarette tucked behind his ear.
Macovich looked around to see if anyone was watching. Cat slipped a hundred-dollar bill out of a zippered pocket on the windbreaker’s sleeve. Macovich stared at the bill and tried to remember the last time he had seen one.
“I tell you what,” he said to Cat. “Let me drop off this fresh seafood first. Meet me back here in an hour or two.”
“Wait a fucking minute,” Cat said, alarmed. “I ain’t taking no lesson in the dark!”
“You crazy, man?” Macovich talked rough with him. “You think a big helicopter like this cares if it’s dark? This baby’s instrument rated, got autopilot, a traffic scope plus a storm scope, and all kinds of landing lights, and even a DVD player in the back so the First Family can watch movies while I haul them around.”
Cat understood the DVD part but nothing else. He was beginning to think he had taken on far more than he could handle, but he wasn’t about to let this big mother cop think that.
“Oh yeah?” Cat said. “Well, I seen bigger, better helicopters than this one. What’chu think all them drivers land in at the racetrack?”