Carl Hiaasen by Sick Puppy

Author:Sick Puppy
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Humorous Stories, Mystery & Detective, Environmentalists, Fiction, Politicians, Suspense Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780330351720
Publisher: Pan Books
Published: 2000-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

DISPATCHER: Hold on, sir, hold on …

CALLER: Please, you gotta call my wife. Tell her the company sent me upstate at the last minute. Tell her … I dunno, make something up, I don’t give a shit … anything!

DISPATCHER: Sir, I’m … sir, did your pilot have a heart attack?

CALLER: No! I’d let you talk to him but he’s kinda busy right now, trying to pull us outta this nosedive … whooaaaaa … Mother Mary … whooaaaaaaa!!!

DISPATCHER: What type of aircraft? Can you give me a flight number?

CALLER: I don’t know … Oh God, it’s so dizzy, so dizzy, oh Jesus … I think I see, uh, cornfields … My wife’s name is Miriam, OK? Phone number is area … uh, area code

DISPATCHER: Cornfields? Anything else? Can you see Duluth yet?

CALLER: Oooooeeeeeeeehhhhh …

DISPATCHER: Sir, I need a location or I can’t assign units.

CALLER: It’s way too late for units, mister … Whoaaaaaaa … you just … whoaaaaaa, Jesus, you just tell ‘em to look for the giant smoking hole in the ground. That’ll be us … Oh fuck me, FUCK MEEEEEEEEEE! …

DISPATCHER: Sir, I have to put you on hold but don’t hang up. Sir? You there?

Mr. Gash was tantalized by the callthe idea that a cheating husband aboard a crashing airplane would find the composure to dial 911 just to cover his doomed ass. What admirable futility! What charming desperation!

A dozen times he replayed the tape. Everything was on there, eighteen thousand feet of gut-heaving panic. Everything was there but the fatal impact and explosion.

Too late for units.

Man, thought Mr. Gash, was that poor bastard ever right.

Mr. Gash’s Duluth connection had enclosed a newspaper clipping with the cassette. The flight was a twin-engine commuter out of St. Paul. It went down in a farm field; twenty-one dead, no survivors. Local authorities didn’t release the name of the passenger who had placed the telephone call from the cabin; they said it would upset the relatives. The original 911 tape was turned over to the National Transportation Safety Board and sealed as evidence in the accident investigation. The version sent to Mr. Gash was a second-generation copy of high quality.

Suddenly he thought of something to make the recording even more dramatic: Redub it with a symphonic piece, one that ended with a crashlike crescendo of cymbalsa musical simulation of an aircraft breaking up as it smashes into the ground.

Sir? You there?

Boom, boooooom, KA-BOOOOOOOM!

“Oh, yeah,” Mr. Gash murmured. He got out of the car to stretch. It was nearly daylight on Toad Island, and still there was no sign of the troublemaker, the woman, the black dog or the Buick Roadmaster.

Mr. Gash went down the street to the bed-and-breakfast. He ambled up the porch steps and knocked. Mrs. Stinson called him around to the kitchen, where she was making muffins. At the screen door she greeted him warily, studying his oily spiked hair with unmasked disapproval.

Mr. Gash said, “I’m looking for a guy with a black dog.”

“Who’re you?”

“He’s driving a big station wagon.

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