= For Old Times' Sake
  by Gerald So

"Quedo aqui," Juan San Martin said, strapping himself into our safely-landed Grumman Goose.

"Suit yourself, Johnny."

I walked back toward Jock's Bimini Bar. Something about our client had my copilot spooked. Going over the night before, I had to admit he had a point.

Enrico Valdez's evolution had stalled somewhere between ape and man. Thick gray brows propped a white straw hat over wooden eyes. Between sips of lemonade, he talked about baseball and fly-fishing, and no one tried for the satchel under his chair.

When he'd slurped the bottom of his third glass and licked his lips, he said, "I'm going to kill my partner."

Utterly certain. Tuesday comes after Monday.

"No te preocupes. You had nothing to do with it, and you'll have nothing to do with her death."

He was comforting us, but also telling us not to interfere.

"We will fly to Bimini at seven a.m. From the time we arrive, you will wait exactly twelve hours. If I meet you on time, we fly back here. If I don't meet you, you are free to leave with your payment."

He lifted the satchel. Ten half-kilo gold bars to fly from Key West to Bimini. Less than an hour up and down. The only trouble I could see was for Valdez's partner.

Normally when we swing by Jock's bar and filling station, Johnny starts to grin every five minutes and wonder if Kate Holden will be there. With Valdez aboard, he was mum.

* * *

I watched the second hand on the clock above the bar. One hour to go.

I flew charters for a year before the Depression put us belly-up. When I finally got back in the air, I decided when and where I flew would be my choice. This thing with Valdez went against all that, but you get what you pay for. Besides, it didn't seem a good idea to make him mad.

Valdez was also paying me to be sober. I signaled Jock for only my second beer of the day.

Johnny believes Jock's is magical, that he, Kate, and I were drawn together. We argue this so often I don't need him:

"I saved your ass twelve years ago..."

"I saved yours," he says.

"We met Kate two years later..."

I drained my beer and was about to finish the argument when a voice behind me said, "C.J. Stone."

I spun on the stool. She pulled my face to hers. Nothing magical about that. The kiss ended when she slapped me.

"Same glass jaw."

"I missed you, too, Kate."

She still tanned well. Maybe a deeper line at her mouth, some lighter strands in her red hair. I couldn't remember when I'd seen her last. Her slap had lost nothing.

"Still flying Mother Goose?" she asked.

"Miss Liberty." I nodded, still rubbing my cheek.

"How about a ride, for old times' sake?"

I checked the clock and said, "Sure. Let me buy Johnny a beer."

"Beer, women, and the sky. C.J. Stone's holy trinity."

I gave Kate Johnny's mug, and she downed it before we reached the plane. "Who're you waiting for?" she asked.

"Enrico Valdez."

Halfway through the name, she stifled a burp.

"Such a lady," I said.

Johnny beamed when he saw Kate. "Sorry, Johnny," she said, showing him the empty mug.

"We're taking Kate for a hop," I said.

Jock's runway is maybe a hundred yards from the bar doors. Just as Johnny hit the starter, I saw Valdez walk in. From his bearing, he wasn't happy.

I hate slow clocks.

"Sorry, Katie, business first."

I felt a familiar jolt in my shoulder. "Didn't know you could use a gun."

She dug the barrel harder into my arm. "Take off."

"Yes, ma'am." I moved Miss Liberty into position and started down the runway.

We leveled off at twenty thousand, and Johnny asked Kate, "Why you do this?"

"Yeah," I put in. "He paid ten bars of gold for a milk run."

She hunched close to my ear. "A milk run to kill me."

"Where to?"

"Pedro's." She tossed it out to see how we'd react.

I smiled to myself, setting off a belly laugh from Johnny.

Pedro's in Tijuana was the first place Kate and I did the deed. Kate isn't the memory-lane type. Or maybe she is, now.

"Tijuana means three fuel stops," I said.

With her free hand, she squeezed my shoulder. "I remember."

When we met, I felt like a kid taking my first bite of a candy apple. It was the sweetest thing I ever tasted, and a hell of a toothache the next day.

If Kate didn't have a gun on me, and Valdez didn't want her dead...

Maybe she'd realize what a tough spot this was and enlighten me.

Johnny looked at her. It had to be his still-curious-but-patient face.

"Okay," she said, but didn't let up on the gun. "Valdez was a captain in the Cuban army. He was exiled when Batista revolted. We met last year working security for Allan Rothschild."

When I whistled, Kate said, "Good, someone you know."

After a second of silence, I said, "I think we need a little more."

"Si."

Kate obliged. "Valdez and I became friendly, and realized we had the same plan."

Recalling the rumor, I started to tell Johnny: "The entire basement of Rothschild's estate... "

"...is a vault," Kate finished. "He wouldn't miss a few bars."

"Since they were on security..."

"...we just walked in and took them."

"And decided to double-cross each other," I added.

"Well, yeah."

Kate had been on the run from another man when we met. I hadn't planned to stop at Jock's that night. I never got where I was going.

Instead, Kate and I tripped around Mexico for two months looking for buried treasure. When it got stale, we left. And I spent the next two years trying to read her mind.

The truth was, I could only keep her out of trouble as long as she let me. She might die the next day.

A milk run to kill me, she'd said.

I could feel her breath behind me. It felt good, and I fought the urge to look back at her.

* * *

Johnny took over from Kingston to Cancun, and I continued north.

By our final refuel, six a.m., Johnny was snoring again.

Kate looked peaceful ... her forehead against the window, her mouth open, her gun nowhere in evidence.

What had they talked about while I slept?

Two hours later, I slipped Miss Liberty down through the clouds and made final approach to an unlit airstrip. Touchdown shook the sleep out of Johnny and Kate.

"Where are we?" Kate asked after looking around.

I jumped from my seat and called out, "What do you do if the clients don't pay?"

"Steal their loot and sell it away!" Zath answered as he wheeled out of the garage. "How the hell ya doin', Siege? I'd get up, but..." He turned it into a laugh. I'd learned not to look at Zath's dead legs.

He bit the cap off a beer in his right hand and held one out to me with the other. I shook my head. "Will you take care of Miss Liberty a while?"

"Me and her can catch up on old times."

He wasn't going to ask, so I told him. "I skipped out on a client."

"Only two things more important than clients...."

"Beer and women," we said together.

"And since you ain't drunk, where's she at?"

Turning back to the plane, I gave a thumbs-up. Kate came ahead of Johnny.

"Hello," she said, almost swallowing it.

Zath's eyes, regretting any break from Kate, flitted to me. "Introduce me, by God."

"Zephyr McGrath, Kate Holden. The little guy is Johnny..."

"Zath," he cut in. "Pleasure to meet you, Miss Kate." He pivoted to Johnny. "Hey, Shorty."

"I met Zath at a bar called Lucky's. He taught me to fly."

Zath may have blushed; his beard was in the way. "Too much tequila," he said. "Didn't know he was just a kid."

"We're heading to Pedro's."

Zath shook his head. "You don't go to Pedro's in daylight. Take a jeep, show Kate around."

I gave Kate a short look. "We'll take the jeep," I said, "but we've been here before."

Zath raised his bottle. "'Scuse me."

* * *

We dropped Johnny off at his cousin's in Ensenada, about an hour from Zath's. Eighty relatives were over for a birthday party.

I remembered a stretch of beach nearby, where Kate and I had found privacy and taken full advantage. Now there seemed to be more villas and more tourists. If this were a planned trip, we might have rented a villa of our own. As it was, we crossed a mountain road, descending as the sun was dimming.

The restaurant at the foot of the mountain turned out to be run by Johnny's brother-in-law. He served us large fajitas at a table for two. Kate ate voraciously and without once looking at me. When she finally reached for water, I grabbed her hand.

"I could take you to Fiji," I said.

For a second, she seemed to picture it. Then she blinked and stiffened her hand, and I let go.

* * *

I knew memory was embellishing Pedro's. As we came closer, I began to realize how much.

Pedro's is a dump, I thought of saying. How about we...

What? I knew she'd say. It's not about the place. It's about what we do there.

I said nothing and stepped on the gas.

* * *

The clerk at Pedro's greeted Kate with a yellow grin. His eyes lingered as he slid me a key.

As before, we had Thirteen. It was still small, the carpet still drab. The floor still creaked no matter where you stepped. I smelled peanut shells, strawberries, and aftershave. I heard our neighbors screw.

"Only the best for you," I said.

Ignoring me, Kate tested the bed with a knee.

"Still iron?"

She curled both legs under and sat. "Do we have to talk?"

She undid the tie in her hair, and the auburn ponytail parted around her shoulders.

I stopped to take her in. I always got shy when Kate got down to it.

"Stop debating and get over here, Cecil."

"Don't call me Cecil," I said.

"Come on. For old times' sake."

She took me in her arms and peeled off my jacket. I pulled off her sweater and kissed her. Our lips were locked. Like the first time.

A hand on the doorknob broke our connection. "Querida, I want my gold."

Valdez? What the hell...

"Out of the way, Stone. I want to kill her first."

Kate's face was ice cold. I couldn't tell what she had in mind until I saw her hands ... drawing the gun she'd used on me from an ankle holster.

I lunged right.

Valdez saw the gun and backed off. "You shouldn't have left me."

I wasn't sure if he meant me or Kate.

"Oh," Kate said, "as if you wouldn't have left me."

"What the hell's going on?"

They ignored me. "You knew I was in Bimini," Kate said. "Why else use your share of the gold to fly there? You knew you'd be getting more."

Valdez wanted to tell her about shares, but she didn't give him a word.

"I rushed things, too, when I saw you. Not hard to guess I was going for the prize."

I hadn't made the guess any harder. How many men had I told about Kate and Pedro's?

Kate got off the bed. "You want to count it?" With the gun, she waved Valdez toward the mattress.

"You," he said without turning to me.

I walked around carefully and lifted the mattress. Pushed to the middle, twenty full-kilo bars ran the length of the bedframe.

Pulling my eyes from the gold to Kate, I could see how she'd set this up. Only the sheets are changed at Pedro's. Don't need to lift a mattress too high to do that.

I remembered the clerk's smile. He'd been holding the room for Kate.

Until Valdez showed up.

"Good girl," he said. Then he moved farther and faster than I thought he could. By the time I saw he had Kate's gun, she was facedown on the floor.

I dropped the mattress and moved to shield her.

Valdez trained her gun on me. "Maybe you go first."

"Maybe I do." It didn't sound that dumb in my head.

A frantic yell, like a drunken Indian war cry, broke the tension. Valdez blinked and I rushed him. He tried to bring the gun around, but I was too far inside. When we reached a wall I pinned Valdez's gun arm with my left, and drove my right into his ribs until his grip loosened. I took the gun as he slumped to the floor.

With a schoolboy smile, I turned to Kate. She was still down. When I reached her, I didn't want to look.

Johnny's voice, shrill a minute earlier, came out flat: "She...?"

"The jeep," I said. "Zath keeps some bags under the seats."

Johnny didn't argue. When he was gone, I rolled Kate over. She was purple where Valdez had hit her. When I knelt closer, her eyes opened wide, and she tried a slap. I grabbed her wrist and clasped my hand in hers. We stayed on the floor in a kiss.

I would have lost track of everything if I hadn't heard "Stone," guttural and spat like a curse. I opened one eye in time to see Valdez reach for his side.

Gun.

I remembered the one in my hand. Kate palmed it, and I rolled off toward Valdez. Two shots.

The sitting figure of Valdez came into focus, two holes chest high, pistol spun away from him.

When we moved the mattress away, the twenty bars I'd seen had matching partners.

* * *

The sign on the counter still read No Preguntamos Nos Clientes ... We Don't Question Our Customers ... but to get rid of a body, the clerk would need incentive. Kate gave him one bar, putting a finger to her lips.

Driving back to Zath's, none of us spoke. I checked the side mirror a few times, really checking on Kate, trying to convince myself she wouldn't leave.

* * *

We tucked the gold into several of Miss Liberty's less visible places. Kate gave Zath a bar for his trouble.

"Hope we'll see you again," he said.

Kate smiled but didn't answer.

At five thousand feet and slightly heavier, Miss Liberty cruised toward a clear horizon, and Johnny explained how he'd saved us. He'd met an old girlfriend at the birthday party. They were the couple in the next room.

"First I hear you talking, then I hear Valdez, then ... just like Jock's...."

I didn't like being in the air too long without a destination, floating around. I glanced at Kate, then back. It had to be getting to her, too. "Where to now?" I asked.

"Rothschild's estate."

"Que?"

"When I left Valdez, I tipped Rothschild to the robbery."

"You told him about Valdez," I said, "and left yourself out."

"And offered to track down his gold."

"Not without expenses."

"Of course."

"Now you're the hero, getting it back after more than a year."

"Most of it," she said.

GERALD SO is an English teacher at Hofstra University, Fiction Editor for The Thrilling Detective Web Site, and moderator of the Yahoo! Groups DetecToday, Spenser's Sneakers, and CrimeSeen. He lives in suburban New York. A prequel to "For Old Times' Sake" will appear in the Summer 2003 issue of Hardluck Stories Zine.

Copyrights (c) 2003 Gerald So