The name the pilot had given was a bizarre joke. Dwight just happened to be the first name of an actor named Dwight Frye, and Dwight Frye had just happened to play, among a plethora of other parts, the role of Renfield, a slavering lunatic whose idol had been the most famous vampire of all time. But radioing UNICOM and asking for landing clearance in the name of Count Dracula might have raised suspicion even in a sleepy little place like this, Dees supposed.
Might have; Dees wasn’t really sure. After all, a landing fee was a landing fee, and ‘Dwight Renfield’ had paid his promptly, in cash, as he had also paid to top off his tanks — the money had been in the register the next day, along with a carbon of the receipt Bowie had written out.
Dees knew about the casual, hipshot way private air-traffic had been controlled at the smaller fields in the fifties and sixties, but he was still astonished by the informal treatment the Night Flier’s plane had received at CCA. It wasn’t the fifties or sixties any more, after all; this was the era of drug paranoia, and most of the shit to which you were supposed to just say no came into small harbors in small boats, or into small airports in small planes . . . planes like ‘Dwight Renfield’s’ Cessna Skymaster. A landing fee was a landing fee, sure, but Dees would have expected Bowie to give Bangor a shout about the missing flight-plan just the same, if only to cover his own ass. But he hadn’t. The idea of a bribe had occurred to Dees at this point, but his gin-soaked informant claimed that Claire Bowie was as honest as the day was long, and the two Falmouth cops Dees talked to later on had confirmed Hannon’s judgement.
Negligence seemed a likelier answer, but in the end it didn’t really matter; Inside View readers weren’t interested in such esoteric questions as how or why things happened. Inside View readers were content to know what had happened, and how long it took, and if the person it happened to had had time to scream. And pictures, of course. They wanted pictures. Great big hi-intensity black-and-whites, if possible — the kind that seemed to leap right off the page in a swarm of dots and nail you in the forebrain.
Ezra the Amazing Gin-Head Mechanic had looked surprised and considering when Dees asked where he thought ‘Renfield’ might have gone after landing.
‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Motel, I s’pose. Musta tooken a cab.’
‘You came in at . . . what time did you say? Seven o’clock that morning? July ninth?’
‘Uh-huh. Just before Claire left to go home.’
‘And the Cessna Skymaster was parked and tied down and empty?’
‘Yep. Parked right where yours is now.’ Ezra pointed, and Dees pulled back a little. The mechanic smelled quite a little bit like a very old Roquefort cheese which had been pickled in Gilbey’s Gin.
‘Did Claire happen to say if he called a cab for the pilot? To take him to a motel? Because there don’t seem to be any in easy walking distance.’
‘There ain’t,’ Ezra agreed. ‘Closest one’s the Sea Breeze, and that’s two mile away. Maybe more.’ He scratched his stubbly chin. ‘But I don’t remember Claire saying ary word about callin the fella a cab.’
Dees made a mental note to call the cab companies in the area just the same. At that time he was going on what seemed like a reasonable assumption: that the guy he was looking for slept in a bed, like almost everyone else.
‘What about a limo?’ he asked.
‘Nope,’ Ezra said more positively, ‘Claire didn’t say nothing about no limbo, and he woulda mentioned that.’
Dees nodded and decided to call the nearby limo companies, too. He would also question the rest of the staff, but he expected no light to dawn there; this old boozehound was about all there was. He’d had a cup of coffee with Claire before Claire left for the day, and another with him when Claire came back on duty that night, and it looked like that was all she wrote. Except for the Night Flier himself, Ezra seemed to have been the last person to see Claire Bowie alive.