Chute Roll Read online

  “But what about —”

  “My bodyguards and the big black car?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “That’s why I’m here,” she said. “I ran away from them.”

  Chapter Seven

  Fifteen minutes later, we were standing in the apartment parking lot in the bright Las Vegas sunshine. There were a lot of cars. None of them were mine.

  “All I have is a motorcycle,” I told Sabella. “Is that okay?”

  “As long as it gets us there. I want to sky dive today.”

  I unlocked my helmet from the motorbike. I had a spare helmet for her.

  We got on the motorbike. It’s not too big — 500 cc — and uses a lot less gas than a car. I try to save all my money for sky diving. I had already put the two thousand dollars in my saving account.

  Sabella rested her hands on my shoulders as I pulled out of the parking lot. I liked that. It seemed like she wanted to be a friend. Which was fine with me.

  My apartment is in an area of town where it takes a bunch of winding streets to get to the main road. I noticed a square green car in my rear view mirror. At first, it didn’t bother me.

  A few minutes later, it did. Just because it was still following. There wasn’t much traffic. It looked like the driver was doing his best to keep one or two cars between us.

  We reached the main road.

  I gunned the motorbike. The green car sped up and stayed with me.

  I slowed down.

  It slowed down.

  “Sabella,” I shouted above the wind noise.

  She leaned forward to listen better.

  “There’s two guys following us in a green car. Do you know them?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Do you want them to know where we are going?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Me neither.”

  “Hang on tight,” I said. “Lean with me into the turn!”

  She wrapped her arms around my waist.

  I spun a U-turn and drove straight back at them.

  As we passed them coming toward us, I got a better look at their faces. They wore brown suits. They had crew cuts. Dark sunglasses hid their eyes.

  Both of them snapped their heads to look at us.

  I laughed.

  “We’re on our own,” I told Sabella. “No worries now!”

  Which, as I found out later, was one of the dumbest things I could have said.

  Chapter Eight

  The flight school is a big old building just off one of the airport runways. It’s not much of a building — just an wide open warehouse with room to part some planes, and with some rooms and offices at the front. Of course, it’s not much of an airport either. The big airport in Las Vegas is where all the jets come in. This airport is way out in the desert, and it has a couple small runways built for small propeller airplanes.

  I punched the time clock to start work.

  Sabella went to the pop machine and got us some colas.

  She found me at one of the tables, packing parachutes.

  “Here,” she said, handing me a cola, “thanks for the lift.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Are you heading up soon?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “Spike is going to make the runs for me.”

  Spike is somewhere between forty years old and sixty years old. It’s hard to tell exactly, because he usually has so much engine grease on his face that the wrinkles are filled in. Spike has been a pilot forever. He wears old coveralls that are dirtier than his face and hands. When he’s not flying one of the small airplanes, he sits in the coffee room and chews tobacco and spits the juice into a pop can. He’s the first one here every day and the last one to leave. Everyone calls him Spike because is bald except for one short black hair that sticks up from the middle of his head.

  “Take this for your first jump,” I said, handing her a parachute. “I packed it myself.”

  “Thank you.”

  I pointed at a a mess of rolled up parachute in the corner. “That’s yours from yesterday. I’m going to see if I can figure out what happened.”

  She shuddered. “I’m trying not to think about yesterday.”

  “Are you scared?” I asked.

  “I’ve never been more scared,” she said. “That’s why I snuck out of the house this morning. I have to prove to myself I can still do it.”

  Her eyes were wide as she spoke. “You see, my father told me I could never jump again. He’s too afraid it might happen again.”

  “I can understand how he feels. People who don’t jump do get nervous thinking about what we do.”

  “No!”

  She surprised me with her sudden anger.

  “No,” she said again. Softer. “Jeff, my mom died before I could remember her. My father has controlled everything I do since I was very little. Sky diving is my way of breaking away. I fought and fought just to get the chance to do it. If I quit now, it’s like letting him run my life forever.”

  “From what I’ve seen,” I said, “parents usually know what they are doing.”

  “I’m not going to explain my home life to you,” she said. Her mouth was tight with anger. “I spend enough time in that gold cage.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. I’ve probably already said too much. If I tell you anything else, you might get hurt. Bad. So no more questions, okay? Leave me alone.”

  I snapped my mouth shut.

  Spike stuck his dirty face through the doorway. “Plane‘s ready,” he said.

  Sabella marched away from me for her first jump of the day.

  I went back to work. I tried to make sense of everything she had said, but I couldn’t figure out a thing. A half hour later, when I got around to looking at her parachute, though, I did figure out one thing.

  And it made me very afraid.

  Chapter Nine

  I was waiting for her as she drifted down. She and I both competed in the accuracy event. The target is set on the ground near the runway, so that you don’t have far to walk after you land.

  Think of trying to drop marbles in a tin can. From the top of a 20-story building. That’s what it’s like for us. In the middle of the target is a small plastic disc. It’s only four inches wide. Hardly bigger than your hand. You are supposed to land right on top of it with either your left or right foot.

  That’s the bad news.

  The good news is that parachutes have steering cables. You can turn with them. You can slow down with them. Or, by letting go, you can speed up. So, even with a wind, you have a good chance.

  One guy did it 105 times in a row to win a world championship. I’m good. Sabella’s good. But we’re not that good. That’s one of the reasons we practice.

  As I watched her come down, I admired her great form. Her eyes were on nothing but the target. Her hands adjusted the steering cable. The nylon chute above her worked like the wings of a slow airplane.

  Just above the ground, she reached with her right foot. It landed square on the target, and she touched the earth like a feather. Not bad for someone who aimed for the target from more than a mile high.

  Sabella rolled forward and got to her feet. She unsnapped herself from her shoulder straps and stepped away from her parachute.

  She grinned. “Checking out the person who’s going to take first place?”

  I grinned back. “I’d need a mirror for that.”

  “Very funny,” she said.

  I could tell she was in a better mood. “Not afraid of jumping?”

  “Not afraid,” she said. “It was great.”

  “Good.” I looked at my feet. I didn’t know how to tell her what I needed to tell her.

  “Jeff,” she said, “I’m sorry for snapping at you this morning. What‘s happening to me is not your fault. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said. “I’m wondering what’s happening.”

  She frowned. “Really, it would be better for you if
you didn’t know.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But maybe I already know more than I should.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your parachute,” I said. “The one that tangled on you yesterday. It wasn’t an accident.”

  Her mouth opened and she tried to speak. But no words came.

  “The cords were tangled because someone packed it wrong,” I said. “And your backup chute didn’t open because the rip cord was cut.”

  I took a breath. “It’s your own chute. Not a rental. Not one of the flight schools. Unless I’m wrong, someone tried to make sure yesterday was your last jump ever.”

  Chapter Ten

  I had a jump of my own later that morning. When I got back inside after talking to Sabella, I packed my own parachute carefully. Very carefully. For all I knew, someone at the flight school wanted other people dead too.

  It was strange enough that someone had tried to get rid of Sabella. It was stranger that she wouldn’t talk to me about it. She wouldn’t guess for me why someone might want her dead. She wouldn’t guess for me who might want her dead.

  That left me guessing on my own.

  I knew that Sabella never packed her own chute. Strangers weren’t allowed to wander around inside. That meant someone at the flight school had done it.

  There was a binder for people to sign off whenever they packed a parachute. The binder showed me that Bill Blundel had been the person who packed her chute. I didn’t think, however, it was him who had wrecked her parachute. First of all, he wasn’t the type. Second, it would have been really stupid on his part. Why wreck someone’s chute and then sign the binder so that everyone knew it was you?

  No, I had to believe someone had taken her chute after Bill packed it. That still left me the two questions. Who? Why?

  Until I knew, I couldn’t trust anyone. After packing my chute, I made sure I didn’t leave it in a place where someone could do something to it. As it turned out, though, my parachute was the least of my problems on my jump.

  Chapter Eleven

  Just after noon, the two big guys came by in their long, black car to get Sabella. She hadn’t told them where to find her. They had figured it out. Not that she cared. From what Sabella had told me, she was just trying to prove to them and to her father that she had a right to make her own decisions.

  And just after the car drove away in the shimmering desert heat, I had my chance to jump. Spike took me high, circled the valley, and left as soon as I jumped. I didn’t even hear the buzzing of his airplane as my body screamed down through the air.

  I dove and swooped like a bird. I spun circles. I did somersaults.

  Finally, at 2,000 feet, I yanked on the rip cord to open my chute. As always, I held my breath and counted. One, two, three…

  Bang!

  The chute jerked me as it caught air. I relaxed and let myself dangle for a few moments. I couldn’t wait long, though. There was a wind pushing me crossways. I wasn’t surprised. As the heat of the day builds, the air gets bumpy. Often it flows over top of the Spring Mountains to the west right across the flat of the valley.

  I began to steer the chute. I didn’t want to oversteer. It is easy to find ways to get ahead to the target as you land. It is almost impossible to drift back to it when you have gone too far.

  At the same time, I allowed myself to enjoy the view. It is a great feeling to hang alone in the sky, miles above the ground. I’m always sad when I have to touch down to earth.

  I looked to my left and saw Charleston Peak across the valley. I looked to my right and saw Lake Mead and how it filled the valley of the Colorado River behind the Hoover Dam. I looked down and saw a ribbon of highway across the browns and reds of desert.

  Closer and closer I drifted to the ground. When you parachute, there is no wind noise because you are moving with the wind. It was peaceful and beautiful.

  Until I heard a zing. Then a loud echoing crack.

  I didn’t understand at first.

  Another zing. Another loud echoing crack.

  What was going on?

  My chute seemed to spill some air. I had to steer to make up for it.

  Zing. Crack.

  It sounded…like…a…rifle. The zing was the bullet, outracing the sound of the crack of the rifle.

  I looked up. There were three holes in my chute. Holes where the sky was bright against the silky red of the parachute fabric. The holes weren’t big enough to wreck the parachute. But the holes were bad news.

  Someone was shooting at me!

  I looked down. I saw nobody.

  Zing. Crack.

  Somewhere in the desert bush there was a person hidden. A person with a rifle. A person aiming at me in my parachute. A person who wanted to punch holes into my body with pieces of lead moving faster than the speed of sound.

  And all I could do was hang in the sky as a big, fat juicy target.

  Chapter Twelve

  I found out who the shooter was that night. I had landed without any holes in my body to leak blood into my jumpsuit. I had walked the short distance to the airport runway without any more shots at me. All that had been damaged was my parachute. Of course, my racing heart had put on a dozen miles of fear. But I’d lived to work the rest of the day.

  I left the flight school on my motorbike at 6:30 and got to the parking lot of my apartment at seven o’clock. It was in the parking lot that I found out who the shooter was.

  As I locked my helmet to my motorbike, a big man stepped out from behind a dumpster and stood with his arms crossed.

  “Happy to be alive, kid?” he asked. He was ten years older than me. He was completely bald, as if he shaved his head. He had a goatee and a face like a bowling ball. He wore a dark suit.

  I pretended I hadn’t heard him. This dude was scary.

  “I’m talking to you kid. Happy to be alive?”

  There was no one else in the parking lot to help me. I began to walk away. I was ready to run.

  “I could have shot you, kid. Those holes in your parachute were just to get your attention.”

  I turned around.

  He laughed. “Surprised I’m telling you? Not that it will do any good. You don’t know who I am. And it’s your word against mine. But trust me, I was the guy with the rifle.”

  “I’ve never seen you before. Why would you want to shoot me?”

  “Shoot at you. Remember that. If I wanted to shoot you, it would have happened.”

  “Why?” I asked. My mouth was as dry as desert sand. The day before, a big goon had promised he would break my legs. Now this goon had already shot at me. What was going on?

  “It’s a warning, kid. Keep out of it.”

  “It?”

  “Don’t play dumb. We know the Scanelli girl came to you for help this morning. You get one chance. This one. If you help her again, we’ll leave you in the desert as food for buzzards.”

  “But —”

  “But nothing. That stunt diving you did yesterday to grab her in the air. Don’t do it again.”

  “Stunt diving? She was going to die!”

  “Exactly. Her old man double-crossed us and that’s the price she’s going to pay.”

  He smiled. A gold tooth flashed at me. “See, kid, it’s like this. No matter how long it takes, no matter where she goes, we’re going to get her.”

  “If it’s her father that—”

  “Her old man that did us wrong? The idiot. He’s in the mob. He knows what happens to people who squeal to the feds. His trouble is that he thought he could outsmart us. That we wouldn’t know who did the singing. What he doesn’t know is that we have someone close to him.”

  Mob? Feds? Her father was a part of the Mafia? He was talking to the FBI? Telling them about other mob people?

  “Mob,” I said out loud. As if that would make this real.

  “Now I see you’re following me kid. He’s already sung his little song to the feds. But we’re not going to let him get away with it. We want to hurt him
through his daughter. If she goes, every day for the rest of his life he’s gonna regret his mistake.”

  I was confused. Very confused. The big guy probably saw it on my face.

  “What I’m telling you kid is simple. We are going to get rid of the girl. You can’t stop us. You have to decide whether you want the same thing to happen to you. Stay away, and you live. Make a move, and you can join her.”

  His smile got bigger. “Next time you go on a jump with her, you let her fall. Got that? If you get in our way again, we’ll be dropping you from 10,000 feet. And I promise you won’t have no fancy parachute on your back.”

  I couldn’t answer. I could hardly believe this was happening. How can you answer when it doesn’t seem real?

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “we’re going to put her in a chute roll.”

  Chute roll. It’s a freak accident. Something that happens if an airplane passes too close by. The wake of the air flips you up and into your chute. You roll. You die.

  “Why am I telling you this?” he asked. “It’s part of the price you pay for getting into business that don’t belong to you. Be handier to get rid of you without a warning, too, but one accident is enough. Any more, and people might look into it too close.”

  He started to back away. His evil smile did not change. “So the price you pay, kid, is that you get to watch her fall.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  In my apartment, I locked my doors and set some chairs in front to stop a Mafia guy from crashing through. That’s how scared I was.

  I sat on the floor and thought about what I had just learned.

  I wondered if I should go to the police. But would they believe me? And if they did, and went to protect Sabella, then the mob people would know I had tried to help her. Then I would be dropped from an airplane without a parachute. And my nightmares about falling would come true.

  I wondered if I should call the FBI. Except — even if I knew who to call — there would be the same problems as calling the police.

  No, I knew I had to speak to Sabella without the gold-tooth guy finding out. Then Sabella could protect herself. And I could stay out of it.

  I stood, moved into my small kitchen, and grabbed the phone book off the counter. The goon with the gold tooth was scary. But stupid. All I had to do was talk to Sabella by telephone. Who would ever know I had helped her then?

  After a few minutes, I realized the gold-tooth guy maybe wasn’t so dumb. I couldn’t find any Scanellis in the phone book. When I called information for the Scanelli number, the operator told me it was unlisted. When I thought about it, it made sense. If I was a Mafia guy, I wouldn’t want many people to know how to get a hold of me.