Phantom Read Online Free PDF Page B

fifth time. Crying and sniffling from the pews. Cocaine, a huge amount of cash. Rent a pad in the West End, register it in the name of some junkie who you pay off with a shot, and start selling in small quantities by stairways or gates. Ratchet up the price as they begin to feel secure; coke folk pay anything for security. Get on your feet, get out, cut down on dope, become somebody. Don’t die in a squat like a goddamn loser. The priest coughs. “We are here to commemorate Gusto Hanssen.”
    A voice from far back: “Th-th-thief.”
    Tutu’s tribe sitting there in biker jackets and bandanas. And even farther back: the whimpering of a dog. Rufus. Good, loyal Rufus. You came back? Or am I already gone?
    T ORD S CHULTZ PLACED his Samsonite bag on the conveyor belt winding its way into the X-ray machine beside the smiling security official.
    “I don’t understand why you let them give you such a schedule,” the flight attendant said. “Bangkok twice a week.”
    “I asked them to,” Tord said, passing through the metal detector. Someone in the union had proposed that the crews should go on strike against having to be exposed to radiation several times a day. American research had shown that proportionally more pilots and cabin crew members died of cancer than the rest of the population. But the agitators had said nothing about the average life expectancy also being higher. Air crew members died of cancer because there was very little else to die of. They lived the safest lives in the world. The most boring lives in the world.
    “You want to fly that much?”
    “I’m a pilot. I like flying,” Tord lied, taking down his bag, extending the handle and walking away.
    She was alongside him in seconds, the clack of her heels on Gardermoen’s gray antique
foncé
marble floor almost drowning out the buzz of voices under the vaulted wooden beams and steel. Unfortunately, it did not drown out her whispered question.
    “Is that because she left you, Tord? Is it because you have too much time on your hands and nothing to fill it with? Is it because you don’t want to sit at home—”
    “It’s because I need the overtime,” he interrupted. At least that was not an outright lie.
    “Because I know exactly what it’s like. I got divorced last winter, as you know.”
    “Ah, yes,” said Tord, who didn’t even know she had been married. He shot her a swift glance. Fifty? Wondered what she looked like in the morning without makeup and the fake tan. A faded flight attendant with a faded flight attendant dream. He was pretty sure he had never screwed her. Not face-on, anyway. Whose stock joke had that been? One of the old pilots. One of the whiskey-on-the-rocks, blue-eyed fighter pilots. One of those who managed to retire before their status crashed. He accelerated as they turned in to the corridor that led to the flight crew center. She was out of breath, but still kept up with him. But if he maintained this speed she might not have enough air to speak.
    “Erm, Tord, since we’ve got a layover in Bangkok perhaps we could …”
    He yawned aloud. And felt no more than that she had been offended. He was still a bit groggy from the night before—there had been some more vodka and powder after the Mormons had gone. Not that he had ingested so much he would have failed a Breathalyzer test, of course, but enough for him to dread the fight against sleep for the eleven hours in the air.
    “Look!” she exclaimed in the idiotic glissando tone that women use when they want to say something is absolutely, inconceivably, heartrendingly sweet.
    And he did look. It was coming toward them. A small, light-haired, long-eared dog with sad eyes and an enthusiastically wagging tail. A springer spaniel. It was being led by a woman with matching blond hair, big drop earrings, a universally apologetic half-smile and gentle brown eyes.
    “Isn’t he a dear?” she purred beside him.
    “Mm,” Tord said in a gravelly voice.
    The dog stuck its