Genuine Lies

and gave their order with a single gesture. He held up two fingers. Within minutes they were served thick wedges of pie along with mugs of steaming black coffee.
    “You’re right,” Paul told him after the first bite. “It’s great.”
    “I’ve been coming here for years, just for the pie. So tell me,” Jack began over a hefty forkful. “You writing another book?”
    “Yeah, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”
    Jack nodded, took a wary sip of coffee, knowing it would be hot and strong enough to sear his stomach lining. “You want to talk about yesterday. I already filed the report. Looks like they’re going to put it down to mechanical failure.”
    “That’s the official story, Jack. What’s your opinion?”
    “Somebody fucked with the fuel line. Real slick, real professional. It looks like a mechanical failure. Hell, if it was somebody else’s plane and I checked it out myself, I’d say the same. The line was stressed, sprung a leak. Dumped most of the fuel over the Sierra Madres.”
    Paul didn’t want to think of the mountains and what the jagged, unforgiving peaks could have done to a sputtering plane. “But it isn’t someone else’s plane.”
    “That’s right.” Mouth full, he waved his fork for emphasis. “And I know my gear, Winthrop. Between the mechanic and me, we keep that bird in a-one condition. No way that line was fatigued, no fucking way it happened to spring a leak. Somebody messed with it, somebody who knew what to do and how to do it.” He scooped up the last of the pie, swallowing it with a combination of pleasure and regret. “That’s what my gut tells me.”
    “I’m willing to go with your gut, Jack. Now the question is what to do about it.” Paul considered a moment. The juke had switched to K. D. Lang, and her mellow, masculine voice added a dash of class to the dreary diner. “Tell me exactly what you did yesterday after you landed in Sausalito.”
    “That’s easy. I bumped around the lounge awhile, talkedshop with some guys, had lunch with a couple other pilots. Julia said she’d be back by three, so I wound up the paperwork, cleared my flight plan. She was right on time.”
    “Yes,” Paul said half to himself. “She’s habitually prompt. Can you ask around, see if anyone noticed someone near the plane?”
    “Already did. People don’t notice much when they’re not looking.” Frowning, he scraped his fork over his plate, making patterns in the smear of purple juice. “You know the thing that hits me, whoever did this knew planes. He could have fixed it so we went down a lot quicker, say when we were over the bay with no place to go. The way it was done had the fuel leaking out, slow and steady. You following me?”
    “Keep going.”
    “If he’d wanted us dead, there were a lot of other ways to fix it and still make it look like an accident. So, I gotta figure he didn’t want us dead. Things could’ve gone wrong and we’d have been that way anyhow, so maybe he didn’t give a shit one way or the other. But if we’d have bottomed out on fuel ten, fifteen minutes earlier, things would’ve been a lot dicier. He fixed it so I had enough juice to get close so a pilot good as me could bring her in.”
    “Sabotaging the plane was a scare tactic?”
    “I don’t know, Hoss, but if it was, it was a fucking bull’s-eye.” His round, pleasant face creased in a grimace. “I made so many bargains with God during the last five minutes that I’m in hock into the next life. And if it scared the sin out of me, I can tell you it left Julia pure as the driven snow.” He eyed Paul’s pie as he signaled for more coffee.
    “Help yourself,” Paul said, pushing the plate across the table.
    “Thanks. It’s easy to spot a nervous flier even when they’re busy telling themselves they can handle it. She doesn’t like being up there, not a bit, but she toughs it out without all the usual crutches—smoking, drinking, sleeping pills. When I had to tell her the situation, she was scared, scared right down to her shoes. Went so white I figured I was going to have a fainter on my hands, but she held on. No screaming, no crying,she just talked to me. She did everything I told her to do. You gotta admire that.” “I do.”
    “Somebody wanted to scare the lady, and scare her bad. I can’t prove it, but I know it.”
    “I’m going to prove it,” Paul told him. “You can take that to the bank.”
    Lyle shifted from foot to foot as he stood