My luggage consisted entirely of one attaché case containing Danny Silvermine’s scripts, other reading matter, materials concerned with the lawsuit that was taking me east, and a beautiful green silk sweater I’d found in a shop in the Rodeo Collection, as a present for Anita. Since there’s so very little of the materialistic about Anita, she’s hard to shop for, so I wind up buying whatever reminds me of her, regardless. This Italian sweater reminded me of Anita’s eyes; whether she ever wore the thing or not was up to her.
My seat, as usual, was 2-C; nonsmoking, aisle, on the north side of an eastbound plane to avoid glaring sunlight. Dropping The Man Who Was Overboard onto this seat, along with a yellow legal pad and a ball-point pen, I stowed my attaché case in the overhead bin, told the stewardess I’d like the orange juice, thank you, without the champagne, and settled myself down to wait for New York.
The only flaw in preboarding is the long long wait before the plane takes off. While we were still on the ground, my seatmate went steadily through every bit of reading matter in The Economist and then turned to another of the several airline-copy magazines he’d stashed in the seat pocket; another advantage of preboarding, getting to pick first through the available magazines. He chose The Atlantic next, beginning with the puzzle at the back, which he slowly but inexorably filled in, in ink, with long pauses while he brooded into space, searching out the answers.
And I read The Man Who Was Overboard. When I finished, I’d made barely half a dozen notes, and those were mostly perfunctory. Danny Silvermine had done his job well, keeping most of my dialogue, bridging and explaining scenes that couldn’t be transferred from film to stage. If you accepted the original premise, that this was a story worthy of recycling in another medium, Danny had done a clean and craftsmanlike job. My only problem was with the original premise. Was this script as tired as I thought it was, or was I the only one so totally weary of Packard and all his works?
Deciding a double dose might help answer the question, and the plane still not having taken off — though first class was now about two-thirds full — I got to my feet, retrieved the attaché case, switched scripts, put the case away, and sat down with Salute the Devil to see my seatmate frowning at me. “I beg your pardon,” he said with an accent that wasn’t quite English, “but have we met? Forgive the intrusion, it’s simply that you look familiar.”
The person who knows he knows me but doesn’t know why is fairly common, particularly now that PACKARD is fading into history. Something told me this man would not have been a regular viewer. I said, “I’m an actor; you’ve probably seen me on television.”
“Oh, is that right?” He seemed pleased, though the thin-lipped mouth didn’t exactly smile. “Where I live,” he said, “I see mostly cassettes. Is your work available on cassettes?”
“In a limited way,” I said. “I was on a series for a while called PACKARD.”
He nodded, politely trying to remember the name. “Would that be a detective show?”
“Yes.”
With a brief headshake he said, “Then, forgive me, I would be unlikely to watch. I am a detective myself, you see, and the difference between television and my own experience...”
“Yes, of course.” When American cops tell me such things, as sometimes happens, I always assume it’s a kind of snobbery, but wherever this fellow came from, police work was undoubtedly very different from the American TV version.
“On the other hand,” he went on, musing, tapping the nearly complete Atlantic puzzle with the tip of the pen, “I can remember being amused by The Rockford Files.”
“The class act,” I agreed.
Dipping into a vest pocket, he came out with a white card, which he handed me, saying, “May I introduce myself? Hassan Tabari.”
The card was expensive stock, the lettering a smooth and faintly Oriental script. His name was in the middle of it, and in the lower right were two lines that read, Minister of Justice, Principality of Dharak. I said, “Dharak. I’m sorry, I don’t think I...”
He was amused, and now he did smile, with closed lips. “We know nothing of one another’s worlds, I see. We are one of the emirates between Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.”
“Where they’re bombing the oil tankers?”
His expression became grim and angry. “Disgraceful,” he said. “There’s a crime for you, but no detective work involved. Unarmed neutral ships are bombed and strafed, innocent sailors slaughtered, and the murderers defiantly announce themselves.”
“Iran and Iraq.”
“Precisely.” He turned his left hand palm upward. “And who is to arrest them?”
“No one,” I agreed.
“There are so many outlaw states in the world.” He was coldly furious, a strong man frustrated. “And too many, I’m afraid, in my own neighborhood.”
We were interrupted then by the stewardess doing the safety announcements as the plane at last was towed back away from the gate and taxied itself out toward its runway. As one stewardess read the drill over the sound system, another one with a fixed smile stood at the front of the cabin, showing the safety card, demonstrating the operation of the seat belt and life jacket and oxygen mask. When at last she was finished, I turned back to Hassan Tabari and said, “By the way, my name’s Sam Holt.”
The name meant nothing to him; in some ways a relief, in some ways disconcerting. Extending his hand, he said, “I’m pleased to meet you.”
His hand was firm, leathery, dry. I said, “Are you on your way home?”
“No, only to New York, to talk with our U.N. Mission. I was in Los Angeles conferring with the police there about a pair of my co-nationals who had behaved badly. I was permitted to question them to see if there were implications for me at home. Fortunately, there were not.” His expression almost sly, he said, “It would appear they received their ideas about bank robbery from television.”
Until he’d said that last part, I’d half-believed the co-nationals he was talking about were the people who’d tried to run me off the San Diego Freeway, the ones Ross was tied up with. It would have been a ridiculous coincidence, but if coincidence didn’t happen in this world, we wouldn’t need a word for it. However, the lions Ross saw himself as taming weren’t bank robbers, and they weren’t — unfortunately — in the hands of the Los Angeles police.
In any event, I now understood why he’d been boarded ahead of those who normally go first. A government minister from a strife-tom corner of the world who had just been visiting with the police in Los Angeles would have somewhat more than the normal clout.
He said, “And you? I see you’re reading a script. On your way to an acting job?”
“I wish I was,” I said, and told him briefly about the lawsuit against the comic book company.
Again he was amused, though distantly. “You must forgive me,” he said, “if I think your problems not entirely... serious.”