“I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” the customs agent said. “Make a left on your way out and report to the international cargo desk. They’ll be able to help you.”
At the cargo desk, a kid in a blue uniform, who didn’t look like he should be up this late, slowly combed over the NSF forms provided by Murphy and the medical documents drawn up by Charlotte, while Michael struggled not to show his impatience. He knew he had to keep cool and do nothing to draw any attention. The kid called over a more senior employee; the laminated tag hanging around the guy’s thick neck identified him as Kurt Curtis. After verifying the paperwork himself, and rechecking Michael’s passport and ID, he said, “Sorry for your loss, sir.”
Michael wondered how many more times he would have to hear that.
Curtis picked up the phone, punched a button, then muttered a few words with his back to Michael. He grunted “yeah” three times, then turned around and said, “If you’ll follow me, I’ll escort you to the cargo transfer station.” Pointing at Michael’s duffel bag, he said, “Don’t forget to take that.”
Outside, the Miami night hit Michael like a hot, wet towel. Get used to it, he told himself. For Eleanor, life in snowy, sleety Tacoma would be an impossibility. Curtis wedged himself into the driver’s seat of the cart, while Michael tossed his duffel into the back and sat beside him. It must have rained in the past hour or two—the tarmac was wet, and there were puddles an inch deep here and there. A taxiing jet blew a foul tornado of even hotter air at them, and the roar of its engine was deafening. Curtis took no notice, but steered the cart past a row of terminals and into a vast open hangar where a van marked MIAMI/DADE COUNTY CORONER was parked. A petite woman in black trousers and a white blouse was leaning against the door, smoking a cigarette. She looked up when Michael grabbed his duffel and got out of the cart. Curtis did a wheelie and left.
“You’re Michael Wilde?” she said, dropping the cigarette on the concrete floor. “I’m Maria Ramirez. Erik Danzig’s wife.”
Michael extended his hand, and very nearly said he was sorry for her loss.
She looked at him closely, with dark eyes, and said, “Long trip, huh?”
He suspected he looked like crap, and she had just confirmed it. “Yes. It was.” He couldn’t keep himself from looking around. Where was the body bag? Had it already been delivered, or was it still in transit somewhere?
“If you’re looking for the bag, it’s already in the van.”
“It is?” His heart nearly leapt out of his chest, and his reaction did not escape Maria’s notice.
“So,” she said, crushing the still glowing cigarette butt under one shoe, “before we have to drag in the police, the FBI, the INS, or whoever, maybe you want to tell me something?”
He had been rehearsing for this moment for days, wondering how he was going to tell her his story, but now that it was on him, all he wanted to do was throw open the doors of the van and rescue Eleanor.
“First of all,” she said, “I don’t know who’s in that bag—I haven’t opened it—but I know it’s not Erik. He’s about a foot taller, and a hundred pounds heavier, than whoever that is.”
“You’re right,” Michael said. “It’s not Erik.”
Maria looked surprised at his immediate capitulation. “Then where is he?”
Michael lowered his head and said, “You’re going to have to bear with me, because what I’m about to tell you is strictly prohibited by the NSF.” And then he launched into his story, reminding Maria that she’d said Danzig—Erik—was never happier than he was at the Pole, and how he would have wanted to be buried there. Michael confessed that he had been. “But we would have caught hell for doing it, so I couldn’t let you know about it until I could tell you here myself, privately, in person.” Then he reached under his shirt collar and pulled the walrus-tooth necklace over his head. When Maria saw it, her eyes welled with tears. “I know he would have wanted you to have this,” Michael concluded. “He always wore it.”
Clutching the necklace in her hand, she turned and walked a few yards away, her head down, shoulders heaving.
Michael waited, feeling his shirt sticking to his skin and his long hair plastered to the back of his neck. It was all he could do not to break into the van, but there were other people not far off—mechanics and a couple of baggage handlers—and he knew he needed to hold on just a little bit longer.
Maria composed herself and retrieved a clipboard from the dashboard of the van. The necklace was hanging around her neck when she returned.
“Okay, so thank you. Erik got what he would have wanted. I owe you one.” Handing him the clipboard, she said, “Sign at all the places I’ve put an X”—there were at least a dozen—and when Michael had finished, she tore off a couple of countersigned copies and handed them to him. “Now it’s official. Erik came back.”
“Thanks.”
“But that still doesn’t tell me who’s in the bag.”