Free Wolf Flow by K. W. Jeter Page A

newspaper that somebody had left on the seat next to him. The headlines were all yesterday's; he dropped it back onto the empty seat and wished that Aitch would hurry up. The first passengers had already come up the narrow slanting tunnel that went out to the plane. That fuckin' cigar smoke was going to make him puke.
        Aitch finally appeared, swinging along with the briefcase dangling from his hand. It was full, Charlie knew, not from the apparent weight of it or anything like that-what Aitch had gone down to L.A. for didn't weigh that much-but just because Aitch wouldn't have been smiling like that if he'd come back empty-handed.
        Charlie got up and walked over, just in time to see Aitch curl his lip, nose wrinkling, and hear him say to the schmuck with the cigar, "Hey, mac-there's kids around. You know?"
        He grabbed Aitch by the arm, right above the elbow, and pushed him out toward the walkway. "Come on, let's get out of here."
        They walked past the metal detectors. "How'd it go?" asked Charlie.
        "Oh, fine. Fine. No problem. We're dealing with reasonable people." Aitch looked back over his shoulder as he walked. "Christ, did you smell that thing? What the-"
        It was dark outside the terminal. Aitch had been gone all day. Charlie unlocked the car's trunk and Aitch tossed the briefcase in.
        "That's the last time I fly in and out of LAX, though." Aitch lounged back as Charlie paid the girl in the parking garage booth. The barrier went up, and he headed for the freeway. "Fuckin' nightmare," said Aitch. "And I don't mean because it's crowded. I can deal with that. It's those goddamn wimpy takeoffs you gotta endure. You know LAX is a black star airport?"
        "What's that?" He swung the car up the on-ramp.
        "I read it somewhere." Aitch was hopped up and talkative from too much caffeine; Charlie recognized the symptoms. "The airline pilots get together and give a black star to airports they think are dangerous. L.A. rates because of the noise restrictions. They gotta creep out of it on low throttle until they're out over the water, then they can give it the gas. Meanwhile you're hanging up there, wondering if this bastard's going to make it. No, man, next time I have to go down there, I'm going to use Ontario. You ever fly out of Ontario? Not Ontario, Canada; I mean the one down in Southern California."
        He moved the car into the center lane and picked up speed. "No. Never have."
        "It's a trip." Aitch stretched his legs out, arching his spine away from the seat, head rolled back. "Full power takeoff. People who live around there don't like it, they can move. Boom, you're up in the air like a slingshot. Real E ticket ride."
        Charlie grunted, noncommittal. Everything was a trip for Aitch.
        Now he was leaning forward, prowling through the glove compartment for a tape he wanted to hear. He gave up, falling back in the seat and leaving the radio tuned to the murmur of the classical station. "Hey, you know Hollis, don't you? You've met him."
        Hollis was the source in L.A. that Aitch had flown down there to talk to. "Yeah, I know him." Hollis was Mister Smooth-he looked like a doctor-which made it easy for him to turn the ones that got in over their heads. It was like dealing with a fellow professional. Or maybe a priest: they got to confess their sins and do their penance. Which was where the margin of profit for Hollis, and for Aitch and him, came from. Things like the stuff the briefcase in the trunk was filled with. Stuff like that, on the loose instead of being locked up in a hospital cupboard, meant that somebody was fucking up.
        "Hollis told me something interesting." Aitch watched the cars over in the next lane. "About skeletons.
        You know how hard it is, getting hold of a good skeleton these days? He hears about these things 'cause of his line of work, you know, hanging around with all these doctors. Some of