LITMIR.BIZ

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      “You start—if you want to—by retaining me as your legal counsel.”

      It had worked, as Elliott Freemantle had known it would.

      He would give them value for their money—a good show, with fireworks, in court and elsewhere. Now that his own involvement was assured, he wanted to cement the relationship by staging the first act of a drama.

      The actors in the drama would be the residents of Meadowood, here assembled.

      The scene would be the airport.

      The time: tonight.

      11

      At approximately the same time D. O. Guerrero was surrendering to failure.

      D. O. Guerrero was a gaunt man, slightly stoop-shouldered, with a protruding, narrow jaw, deep-set eyes, pale thin lips, and a slight sandy mustache. His age was fifty; he looked several years older.

      He had been married for eighteen years. By some standards, the marriage was good. But in the past year, a mental gulf had opened between the Guerreros which Inez, though she tried, was unable to bridge. It was one result of a series of business disasters which reduced them to near poverty, and eventually forced a succession of moves, including the one to this drafty, cockroach-infested, two-room apartment.

      A few weeks ago, in a rage, he had struck Inez. She feared more violence and, soon after, sent their two teen-age children to stay with her married sister in Cleveland. Inez herself stayed on, taking a job as a coffee-house waitress, and the work at least provided money for food.

      Inez was now at her job. D. O. Guerrero was in the apartment alone.

      He held a confirmed reservation, plus a validated ticket—for tonight—on Trans America Flight Two to Rome. Inez had no knowledge of the ticket to Rome.

      The Trans America ticket was for a round trip excursion which normally cost four hundred and seventy-four dollars. However, by lying, D. O. Guerrero had obtained credit. He had paid forty-seven dollars down, acquired by pawning his wife’s last possession of any value—her mother’s ring.

      He had avoided a credit investigation by typing deliberately misspelling his surname, changing the initial from “G” to “B,” so that a routine consumer credit check of “Buerrero” would produce no information, instead of the harmful data recorded under his correct name.

      In any case, when checking in at the airport later tonight, he intended to have the spelling corrected—on the Trans America flight manifest as well as on his ticket.

      Another part of D. O. Guerrero’s plan was to destroy Flight Two by blowing it up.

      His own life was useless, his death, though, could be of value, he intended to make sure it was.

      Before departure of the Trans America flight, he would take out flight insurance for seventy-five thousand dollars, naming his wife and children as beneficiaries. He believed that what he was doing was a deed of love and sacrifice.

      D. O. Guerrero had selected Trans America’s non-stop flight to Rome, because he reasoned, his own plan must preclude the recovery of wreckage. A large portion of the journey of Flight Two—The Golden Argosy—was above ocean.

      Guerrero calculated that after four hours’ flying Flight Two would be over mid-Atlantic. A finger through the loop, a tug on the string! And the explosion would be instant, devastating, final, for whomever or whatever was nearby. It would send the aircraft, or what remained of it, plummeting toward the sea. The debris of Flight Two would remain forever, hidden and secret, on the Atlantic Ocean floor.

      Flight insurance claims—in the absence of any evidence of sabotage—would be settled in full.

      It was a few minutes after 8 P.M.

      One final thing to do! A note for Inez.

      It wasn’t much of a note to mark the end of eighteen years of marriage but it would be a mistake to say too much. Afterward, even without wreckage from Flight Two, investigators would put the passenger list under a microscope.

      Part Two

      8:30 P.M. – 11 P.M. (CST)

      1

      Once more, Joe Patroni returned to the warmth of his car and telephoned the airport. The Aéreo-Mexican 707 was still stuck in mud out on the airfield. His help was needed urgently.

      At the moment, the scene around the wrecked tractor-trailer transport looked like a staged disaster for a wide screen movie. The arrival of a TV camera crew, a few minutes earlier, had heightened the stage effect.

      Before he left to make his telephone call, Joe Patroni had carefully coaxed the tow trucks into locations which would give them the best leverage, together, to move the disabled tractor-trailer. As he left, the truck drivers and helpers were connecting heavy chains which he knew would take several more minutes to secure. But now, incredibly, the chains were removed, except for one which a grinning tow truck operator was handling as a portable TV camera focused on him.

      “Who in hell changed the trucks? The way they’re lined now, all they’ll do is pull each other.”

      “I know, Mister.” The lieutenant appeared fleetingly embarrassed by Patroni’s words. “But the TV guys wanted a better shot.”

      “You just blocked this road an extra twenty minutes. It took ten minutes to locate those trucks where they should be; it’ll take another ten to get them back.”