The morning's headlines were filled with news of several San Francisco Police Department officers killed overnight - which were described as thoroughly brutal assassinations. The first these reports savaged the climate of fear that had enveloped the Bay Area as a result of an apparent Death Squad operating at the heart of one of the most storied police departments in the country, then these articles went on to recount the rise of Briggs' original group of vigilante cops, then Harry Callahan's take-down of this group and then, finally, the emergence of an even bigger network of renegade cops cloistered within departments all around the Bay Area. Callahan's ancestry was then cited as a possible motive for several recent hate crimes perpetrated against him by members of his own department, and for his murder overnight. Callahan's associations with Captain Samuel Bennett, also struck-down within the past week, were then detailed, and then the murder of Bennett's sister Stacy - which for some reason was highlighted in unusually graphic terms - rounded out the initial reports. The murder of Callahan's roommate from the academy, Albert Bressler Jr. and from the department's Vice detail, was also mentioned, and in context with the broadening ring of retribution-style killings echoing throughout the department. An editorial concluded with the news that the chief and the mayor were to meet later in the week to discuss the creation of a Blue-Ribbon Commission to get to the bottom of all these events...
At about the time the Chronicle's late morning edition was being put to bed, just after all the breathless reporting about the explosion on the 101 was complete, an unregistered Lockheed Jetstar took off from SFO - bound for Zurich.
Or so said the flight plan.
+++++
Harry sat in the very rear of the aircraft, alone now and very tired.
He watched Bressler putting his stale moves on the stewardess up front, yet he was unsurprised how interested this beautiful young creature seemed in everything Bressler said.
"Poor Al..." Callahan sighed. "He'll be clueless 'til the very end."
Captain Bennett was hunched over a small table amidships, lost in conversation with Avi Rosenthal. No doubt they had been working on this operation together, and probably for quite some time; at least Harry had surmised as much as when he saw the Jetstar on the ramp at SFO.
Stacy was asleep across from him in a facing seat, and without realizing he was doing so he realized he was studying her features. Big-boned, just like her brother, and painfully smart, her long brown hair was just showing the first signs of gray here and there, and he smiled a little when he noticed she had just undergone another electrolysis treatment to thin the dark facial hair on her upper lip. Her right index-finger was heavily calloused - just like his - from endless hours of pistol practice at the range, and he noticed her forearms were at least as heavily muscled as his own. He knew from recent experience that she had runners' legs, because - again, just like he did - she ran at least five miles every morning. She was, he suddenly realized, just barely feminine - and he didn't find her attractive in the least. Which was, he now understood, a very good thing...if only because she had become his very best friend.
He looked up, looked past Sam to Avi sitting under a tiny reading light, and he was surprised to see that his 'step-father' looked like he had aged a lot over the last three years...and for some reason, he found this unsettling.
How would, he thought with no small amount of dread in his heart, his mother look?
When he'd last seen her she was settling into her piano once again and taking an interest in writing music, but only after he'd passed along all he knew about Gershwin and Joplin and all the other colossal music of the Roaring Twenties. In other words, all the music she'd once found cringeworthy when she heard him playing...
He stood and walked upfront and the stewardess turned to greet him.
"Yessir?" she asked in a modest accent that sounded faintly German. "Can I get you something?"
"Coke. Maybe with a splash of rum."
She smiled and disappeared into the Jetstar's tiny galley - and Bressler turned to face him.
"Harry? I'm in love. This is it. The real deal."
"Al, you say that after every date you've ever been on. All three of 'em."
Al scowled, then grinned. "Not this time, Harry. This is the real deal, I'm tellin' ya."
"Al, she's a stewardess. She's supposed to make you feel special."
"Yeah, I know. She works for El Al, Harry. She's the real deal, man."
Harry sighed as the stewardess returned, and he smiled at her as she passed over the drink - complete with a thin wedge of lime - and he noticed the way she smiled at Al when she came back. He turned to leave and Bressler dove back in wherever it was he'd left off when Harry walked up.
"Well, I'll be dipped," Callahan said to himself as he walked past Avi and Sam to his seat, and he was surprised to see that Stacy wasn't in her seat - until he saw the little amber 'occupied' light by the head door. He sat and buckled in, waited for her return.
He smiled when he saw her, smiled in spite of himself, and then he realized that he always felt that way whenever he saw her.
"Where are we?" she asked as she buckled in across from him.
"Greenland," he said as he pointed out the window past the left wing-tip. "You slept through Toronto."
"No shit?"
"No shit. I think you were more than a little tired."
"I couldn't sleep on the flight out."
"Excited?"
She shook her head. "No, not really. More like a lot of stuff going on at work, trying to tie up as many loose ends as I could without arousing suspicion."
"Well, how do you like being dead?"
She grinned then shook her head. "Probably about as much as you do."
They talked about anything and everything except what was really on their minds, namely what was going on back in San Francisco, then Bressler walked back their way, beaming as he bounced along in the turbulent motion of the little jet.
