The Coffin Dancer

world. “Privilege to fly with you, ma’am,” he’d say, offering his imperfect Elvis Presley impersonation. “Thank you very much.”
    The pain behind her eyes was nearly gone now.Percey had lost friends—to crashes mostly—and she knew that psychic loss was an anesthetic to physical pain.
    So was whiskey.
    Another hit from the flask. “Hell, Brit.” She slumped into the couch beside him. “Oh, hell.”
    Hale slipped his strong arm around her. She dropped her head, covered with dark curls, to his shoulder. “Be okay, babe,” he said. “Promise. What can I do?”
    She shook her head. It was an answerless question.
    A sparse mouthful of bourbon, then she looked at the clock. Nine A.M. Ed’s mother would be here any minute. Friends, relatives . . . There was the memorial service to plan . . .
    So much to do.
    “I’ve got to call Ron,” she said. “We’ve got to do something. The Company . . . ”
    In airlines and charters the word “Company” didn’t mean the same as in any other businesses. The Company, cap C , was an entity, a living thing. It was spoken with reverence or frustration or pride. Sometimes with sorrow. Ed’s death had inflicted a wound in many lives, the Company’s included, and the injury could very well prove to be lethal.
    So much to do . . .
    But Percey Clay, the woman who never panicked, the woman who’d calmly controlled deadly Dutch rolls, the nemesis of Lear 23s, who’d recovered from graveyard spirals that would have sent many seasoned pilots into spins, now sat paralyzed on the couch. Odd, she thought, as if from a different dimension,I can’t move. She actually looked at her hands and feet to see if they were bone white and bloodless.
    Oh, Ed . . .
    And Tim Randolph too, of course. As good a copilot as you’d ever find, and good first officers were rare. She pictured his young, round face, like a younger Ed’s. Grinning inexplicably. Alert and obedient but firm—giving no-nonsense orders, even to Percey herself, when he had command of the aircraft.
    “You need some coffee,” Hale announced, heading for the kitchen. “I’ll getcha a whipped double mochaccino latte with steamed skim.”
    One of their private jokes was about sissy coffees. Real pilots, they both felt, drink only Maxwell House or Folgers.
    Today, though, Hale, bless his heart, wasn’t really talking about coffee. He meant: Lay off the booze. Percey took the hint. She corked the flask and dropped it on the table with a loud clink. “Okay, okay.” She rose and paced through the living room. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. The pug face. Black hair in tight, stubborn curls. (In her tormented adolescence, during a moment of despair, she’d given herself a crew cut. That’ll show ’em. Though naturally all this act of defiance did was to give the chahmin’ girls of the Lee School in Richmond even more ammunition against her.) Percey had a slight figure and marbles of black eyes that her mother repeatedly said were her finest quality. Meaning her only quality. And a quality that men, of course, didn’t give a shit about.
    Dark lines under those eyes today and hopeless matte skin—smoker’s skin, she remembered from the years she went through two packs of Marlboros a day. The earring holes in her lobes had long ago grown closed.
    A look out the window, past the trees, into the street in front of the town house. She caught sight of the traffic and something tugged at her mind. Something unsettling.
    What? What is it?
    The feeling vanished, pushed away by the ringing of the doorbell.
    Percey opened the door and found two burly police officers in the entryway.
    “Mrs. Clay?”
    “Yes.”
    “NYPD.” Showing IDs. “We’re here to keep an eye on you until we get to the bottom of what happened to your husband.”
    “Come in,” she said. “Brit Hale’s here too.”
    “Mr. Hale?” one of the cops said, nodding. “He’s here? Good. We sent a couple of Westchester County troopers to his place too.”
    And it was then that she looked past one of the cops, into the street, and the thought popped into her mind.
    Stepping around the policemen onto the front stoop.
    “We’d rather you stayed inside, Mrs. Clay . . . ”
    Staring at the street. What was it?
    Then she understood.
    “There’s something you should know,” she said to the officers. “A black van.”
    “A . . . ?”
    “A black van. There was this black van.”
    One of the officers took out a