Kitabı oku: «Hurricane Hannah», sayfa 2
Craig shrugged. “She can sleep on her plane.” He jerked his thumb toward it. “It looks posh enough for a sultan.”
“Except a real sultan would be buying a new one.”
“Quibble, quibble, quibble. You need to get laid, man. Then maybe you wouldn’t have all that energy to waste on stupidity.”
With that, Craig stalked out the side door, a man-sized door, that hadn’t been locked up yet. Buck stood alone in his hangar with two large planes and a couple of small ones that belonged to island residents, and wondered why he put up with Craig.
Of course, Craig was a natural-born mechanic. That helped. In front of him, the computer still hummed, a bar showing that the download had progressed eleven percent. Beside it, the big printer was busy drawing schematics. How complicated could it be?
Complicated enough. A plane, any plane, was a complex beast, and the newer they were, the more that complexity had been magnified.
So he had two choices. One of them involved going back to his office and facing the redheaded Valkyrie. The other meant sleeping out here on a battered recliner in the small parts office.
He decided the Valkyrie presented the lesser of two evils. He’d shoo her off to sleep on her plane, then peace would prevail, at least until morning.
He opened the door to the outside, rather than the one farther to the rear that joined with his living quarters behind the front office. Whenever he could, he preferred to walk outdoors.
But this time he froze on the threshold. Red sunsets weren’t unusual in the tropics, but this one blazed like fire, and it raged in the east, rather than the west, high in the sky because of the clouds of the approaching storm.
Magnificent. He soaked it up, filling his heart, mind and soul with the beauty. That was why he’d moved to this godforsaken island with its loony inhabitants and crazy casino. Because here he could live halfway up the side of a volcanic cone and be left pretty much alone while still running an adequate business.
Stepping out, he worked the mechanism that safely reinforced the door from the inside, then walked around to the front of the hangar to look west.
The sun was riding the rim of the Caribbean like an angry red eye. The water, usually a soothing Caribbean blue-green, was dappled in red and purple, and beginning to look choppy.
There was nothing in the world, he thought, like the sunset before a tropical storm.
Then, without warning, a different red filled his vision. It was silky, redder than red in the evening light, a fluffy cloud around a perfect face with challenging green eyes.
“Did you find out what was wrong?”
He might have sighed, except he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. Instead he clamped down on his cigar. “Nope.”
“Why not? I thought you said you’d find out what was wrong?”
Now he bit down hard. “Actually,” he said between his teeth, “I’m printing out the fuel line schematics right now. At the rate it’s going, it’ll probably take all night. You can thank the manufacturer for that.”
Her eyes flashed. In that instant, they looked like lightning reflected off the stormy gray-green shallows of the Caribbean Sea. But then, as if something flicked a switch in her, the flare quieted.
She nodded acknowledgement to him. “Thanks.”
To his surprise, it didn’t look as if she had to force the word out. Temperamental but in control. Despite himself, he was piqued.
At that moment, Craig roared by on his way down to his home in town. His Jeep kicked up a little loose gravel as he went by, waving at them.
Hannah Lamont waved back, then returned her attention to Buck. “I’ll sleep on the plane then.”
“Sure. No problem.” He pointed to the door. “Bar it when you get inside. No telling when that storm is going to hit.”
She nodded, but this time a flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. “See you in the morning, then.”
She started to brush past him, but then he had to deal with the fact that not only was he being a jerk, he was being a rude jerk. There were some courtesies he couldn’t ignore even in an attempt to avoid Delilah. “You got anything to eat on that plane?”
“I was supposed to be in Aruba shortly.”
Mentally kicking his own butt, he said, “Come on back to the office. If I have to make dinner for myself, I might as well cook for two.”
“You cook?”
He wasn’t sure if that was an intentional insult or just genuine surprise. So he opted for surprise. “Yes.” He rolled the cigar a little before adding, “Not all men are helpless without women.”
Her eyebrows arched. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t cook.”
No! He didn’t want to like her. No way. Instead of responding, he stalked past her toward the office and soothed himself with the reminder that she would vanish from his island the very instant he repaired her plane.
There was security and safety in that. A promise of the uncomplicated future he really wanted.
CHAPTER THREE
HANNAH WAVERED between wanting to strangle Buck Shanahan, and wanting to like him. He was as prickly as a pear cactus and seemed to have taken her in instant dislike. Other than ruining his poker hand (and she still did not believe that so many people could be insane enough to determine the fate of their island with a poker game) during her landing, she couldn’t imagine why. Well, she had been a little…upset when she deplaned, but any person with a half-ounce of common sense would understand what she’d just been through. Adrenaline tended to make you that way.
Still, he fed her. He didn’t invite her into the inner sanctum behind his office, nor did she especially want to go there, but when he emerged a half hour later he offered her cold potato salad, cold fried chicken and a healthy serving of steamed broccoli. All of it was savory. She gave him marks as a cook, if not as a mechanic or human being.
“That was wonderful,” she said when she’d sucked the last bit of meat off the bone. If it hadn’t been rude, she’d have licked the plate, too.
“Thanks.” He sounded gruff. Then he took their plates into the back, leaving her alone to look out at what was now getting to be a very dark night. She could see a portion of the earth’s shadow on the highest clouds, an arc of darkness moving toward zenith now, the red winking out behind it.
She supposed she ought to go out to the plane before it got any darker, but she felt strangely reluctant to move. So instead, she helped herself to another cup of coffee, and settled back in the chair.
She expected Buck to remain in his hermitage, but to her surprise he returned and sat on the far side of the counter from her. She could just see his head above the countertop.
She decided to try being sociable. “How long have you had this airport?”
“About eight years.”
“And before that?”
He looked at her. “Top Gun.”
She sat up straighter. “Really?”
He scowled at her. “Why would I lie about that?”
“I can’t believe you could give that up!”
That made him smile for the first time since she’d met him, and oh, what a smile it was. It transformed him completely.
“Eventually my back had enough of the g-forces. And I had enough of the Navy.”
“But you must miss it.”
“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly. “Once in a while.”
“This must sometimes seem pretty tame.”
He cocked a brow at her. “Not when people try to take my head off with their wings. It reminds me of that Samuel Johnson quote. ‘Nothing concentrates the mind like the imminent prospect of being hanged.’”
She nodded, wondering if there was more to a man who could quote Samuel Johnson, but said only, “I wondered if I’d have to ditch her.”
He shook his head. “Not a good thing, ditching. Planes tend to fall apart in all the wrong ways.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Silence fell between them for a few moments. Then she asked, “Where did I land, anyway? There are so many small islands out here, and while I have a general idea where I am, I’m not sure which lump of rock I’m sitting on.”
He rotated his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “This lump is called Treasure Island.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. The first person known to have settled here was One Hand Hank Hanratty about eighty years ago. He was a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson, I hear.” The cigar bobbed as he resettled it. “Rumor has it the alligator bit off his hand.”
“The alligator?”
“Yeah. Apparently Hanratty brought him as a pet. Says something about the guy’s character. Anyway, Buster, the gator, is still around. Hanratty isn’t.”
“Well, if he brought only one gator, I can understand why the thing bit off his hand. Buster must be lonely.”
Buck shrugged. “He goes to Bridal Falls sometimes and scares the tourists when they’re having a tropical wedding. Mostly he just keeps to himself. Nobody wants to get him a mate, though. This isn’t his native habitat, and we don’t want the place crawling with gators, either. It’d scare the tourists.”
Hannah nodded. “What do tourists come here for?”
Apparently she’d asked exactly the right question, because Buck suddenly grew expansive. “Well, now, there are really cheap cruise lines. They like to pull into harbor here and let their passengers gamble at the casino. They market it as tropical charm, but what it really is is a bunch of big tiki huts with games, slots and a couple of bars. I guess it impresses people who come from way up north.”
Hannah nodded, envisioning it. “It would have a certain kind of charm, I guess.”
“If you’ve never been to Vegas or Reno, yeah. Anyway, they pull in for a day of gambling, and sometimes passengers will get married by the captain at Bridal Falls. I don’t reckon anyone knows who was the first person to do that, but it’s become a bit of tradition in these parts. Townfolk will attend to make it festive.”
“That’s nice.”
“It’s downright stupid, if you ask me.”
She felt herself bristling at his attitude, but tamped it down. She needed this idiot to repair the plane. She also needed to use his radio or phone or something to let her buyer know she would be late. Although after this he might not want the jet at all. She smothered a sigh. “What about the mountain? It looks like a volcanic cone.”
“It is.”
“Active?”
“That’s the story.”
Gloom began to settle over her. Could it get any worse? “How active?”
“It shrugs from time to time. Been awhile since the last eruption, though. Maybe five hundred years.”
“How often is it supposed to erupt?”
He suddenly grinned at her over the countertop. “Getting nervous, Sticks?”
“Absolutely not!” She had the worst urge to bean him with his cigar. Purposefully irritating, that was what he was. “Do you ever light that thing?”
He took the cigar from his mouth and studied it. “Why would I want to do something that stupid?”
“Then what is it doing in your mouth?”
He grinned again as he looked at her. “I have this oral fixation.”
To her horror, she blushed beet red. Quickly she looked away, out the window, hoping the last bit of red light would hide the blush.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced, rising quickly and putting her mug on the counter.
“Good idea,” he agreed. “You want to get some sleep before the storm hits.”
That froze her in her tracks. “Can we check the weather?”
“Sure. I’ve got a feed.”
She was relieved to hear it. At least this godforsaken airport had moved that far into the twenty-first century.
He turned behind the counter and flipped a dial. Soon a mechanized voice was reading the forecast. Then he flipped another switch and a fax machine began to print out a weather map.
Interested, as all aviators were interested in the weather, Hannah forgot her embarrassment and leaned over the counter, listening and watching.
“Tropical Storm Hannah has developed wind speeds in excess of sixty-five miles per hour. The storm has stalled at its current location and appears to be strengthening, with the barometer steadily falling….”
“Hell,” Buck said. Moments later he ripped the fax off the machine and stood up, putting it on the counter so they could both look at it. Their heads came close to knocking.
“Cripes,” he said, “look at those isobars. It’s tightening up.”
“Do you have an earlier map?”
He turned and pulled a sheet of paper off a shelf. “Here, see?”
Indeed the lines that measured barometric pressure were drawing closer together, around a circle that could swiftly become the eye of a hurricane.
“It doesn’t look good,” she said reluctantly.
“No, it doesn’t.” He took the cigar from his mouth and tossed it in the trashcan. “If she’d just kept moving, we’d have had a tropical storm. No big deal except for the casino. But if she stalls out there long enough, she could become a real beast.”
Hannah nodded and met his blue eyes. “I don’t like this.”
“Me neither. You might be here awhile, Sticks.”
“Is this place safe?”
“I built it to be. I didn’t want to lose everything every couple of years.”
“Well,” she said hopefully, “maybe even if it becomes a hurricane it won’t go past Category One.”
“We can hope.” He sighed. “Come on, I’ll walk you out to your plane. I forgot you don’t know your way around.”
The late evening was perfectly still, and growing darker by the second. The land had not yet cooled below the temperature of the surrounding water, so nothing moved. Later there would be a breeze, but right now the night was quiet and balmy. The air, full of moisture, felt soft to the skin. Hannah thought prosaically that in a climate like this, there’d be no need for moisturizers.
Buck opened the door to the hangar, letting her pass through first. He’d left a light on near the computer, so the cavernous space wasn’t completely dark. The printer was still humming, although the computer had gone into screensaver mode. Reaching out, he threw the switch that turned on the lights above Hannah’s plane. Then he went to look at the progress on the schematics.
He moved the mouse, and the progress bar appeared. “Nineteen percent. This is unreal.”
Hannah looked at the long stream of paper that was folding up on the floor. “No kidding. That’s my fuel system?”
“One and the same. And that’s less than twenty percent. We’re going to have our work cut out for us unless we find something obvious.”
“Well, it had to be some place the fuel could leak from fast. I didn’t have a whole lot of time.”
He nodded. “We’ll find it. In the meantime…”
“Yeah, get some sleep. You’ll wake me if things start to get worse?”
“Sure, why not? Worrying is a useful thing to do.”
She scowled at him. “I don’t want to worry. I want to enjoy the storm.”
“Enjoy?” He looked at her like she was crazy. “You’re kidding.”
“I love storms. Always have. I’d like to be awake for this one.”
“Well, if it decides to move this way,” he said almost sarcastically, “I doubt you’ll miss it.”
She cocked her head and put her hands on her hips. “Were you born a boor?” Then with a toss of her long red hair, she strode away through the dimly lit hangar to her plane.
“Wait a minute,” he called after her. “You have to lock the bar on the inside of this door after I leave.”
Annoyed that her high-dudgeon exit had been interrupted, she stomped back to him. He went to the door and pointed to a lever. “Throw this to the right. The bar will lock in place. Even Buster won’t be able to get in.”
Then he was gone, leaving her to fume. She threw the lever, glad to lock him out, then started back to her plane.
Not even Buster would be able to get in? All of a sudden she felt creeped-out. Why would he even mention it? Did that alligator actually sometimes come into this hangar?
Nervously she looked around as she hurried toward her plane. It was a relief to ascend the stairs, then pull them up behind her. Alone at last, she tumbled onto the bed in the tail without even pulling off her flight suit.
Enough was enough.
CHAPTER FOUR
HANNAH AWOKE in the morning to find herself eyeball-to-eyeball with a huge pair of reptilian eyes. For a few seconds, she was absolutely certain she was imagining them. Then the hair stood up on the back of her neck.
The alligator seemed to be grinning at her, his mouth hanging open. She froze as still as a statue, hoping he would think she was dead, not sure if that would work for an alligator, wondering how the heck he’d gotten on her plane, wondering how the heck she was going to get off her plane.
Then the alligator lifted his head and let out a deep, inhuman roar that seemed to bounce off the walls of the small cabin and shake her eardrums so hard it hurt.
Oh, Lord, was that a threat? Did alligators roar before they attacked? She felt the most childish urge to pull the covers over her head and convince herself she was hallucinating this.
Despite her best efforts not to move, a whimper escaped her and she pulled back. But, to her amazement, the gator didn’t leap at her in attack. No.
Buster looked wounded.
She shook her head, convinced her eyes were deceiving her, but nothing changed. The alligator looked hangdog. Hurt.
“Buster?” she said cautiously.
The gator’s head came up, and he eyed her with something that seemed like hope.
Astounded, Hannah considered the possibility that this relic of the dinosaur era had learned something about human behavior. What other kind of behavior would he know, never having had another alligator to talk to?
Cripes, she was losing her mind. Reptilian brains didn’t have emotions.
Did they?
Slowly, taking care not to startle the beast by moving too quickly, she pushed back the blanket she had pulled over herself sometime during the night. Buster watched, but made no move.
Slowly, she stood on the bed, which had replaced a row of seats against the rear bulkhead, wondering if she could leap across him to the aisle before he could turn in the confined space.
The option failed to excite her. She’d never been any good at the long jump, never mind jumping from a dead start.
Buster cocked his head, watching her from one eye, then let out another deafening roar. At once she rediscovered her ability to jump…backward. Pressed against the rear bulkhead, she studied her nemesis while wondering what it would feel like to be devoured alive. Not pleasant, certainly.
But once again Buster looked hurt, as if her moving away was not what he wanted. Well, of course he didn’t want it. The farther away she was, the harder she would be to catch and eat.
Then he did something she would have thought impossible, something that nearly curdled the blood in her veins. He reared up and got his front legs on the bed.
“Oh, God!” The prayerful words escaped her lips, and all thought of not being able to jump disappeared in a wash of adrenaline. Before she had another coherent thought, she ran across the bed and leapt over the gator, reaching the floor—and his tail—in a flash. She kept running up the aisle toward the door, hoping the hydraulics would open the hatch before Buster caught up.
Another roar followed her, this one almost a groan. She could hear scraping as scaly skin began to slide around on the industrial carpeting.
She slammed her hand on the emergency button and watched the hatch begin to lower. Hurry! Hurry!
The sound of scraping alligator skin was growing closer. Afraid to wait any longer, the instant the stairs were halfway lowered, she climbed out onto them and then jumped.
Her ankles stung as her feet hit the concrete floor. She wanted to keep running, but now that she was no longer confined, she couldn’t help but turn curiously to see what happened.
Moments later, Buster’s head appeared in the hatch. If an alligator could have sad puppy-dog eyes, this one did. The sound that escaped him now was nothing like his earlier roar. It was, she thought wildly, the alligator equivalent of a whimper.
Hardly reassured, she backed up. Lumbering as if stairs were unfamiliar, Buster began to descend the now fully opened gangway.
Hannah backed up. Swiftly. If she had an ounce of common sense, she’d flee at once from this hangar and send that annoying Buck Shanahan in here to deal with Buster.
Which, she decided, much as it might wound her pride, she was going to do.
Then she remembered from countless TV shows that alligators could move very fast. Faster than one might think.
That did it. She turned and ran for the door, her feet barely touching the floor. Behind her, scaly scrapes followed quickly. Buster apparently had no intention of letting her out of his sight.
She reached the door, but of course it was barred. She worked the lever as quickly as she could with sweaty palms, and at last managed to throw it back. She could hear Buster right behind her, but she refused to look back. That would only waste valuable escape time.
With a mighty shove, she pushed the door outward and darted through it.
The heat and humidity of the tropical morning felt like a punch in the face. She hardly noticed it as another growl propelled her away from the hangar, toward the office. As she ran, she vaguely noticed that the clouds had come no closer, but appeared darker than yesterday. Heat waves shimmered above the runway in the heavy air.
And scales still scraped behind her.
All of a sudden, Buck Shanahan appeared around the corner of the office. He was dressed in the same khaki as yesterday, though the clothing looked fresher.
“What the hell—?”
She ran right past him, saying, “Get rid of that prehistoric beast. Now!”
It didn’t help to hear his laugh as she flew toward the office door. Once inside the air-conditioned building, she collapsed on a chair and put her head between her knees, feeling as if she were on the edge of fainting…or vomiting, either of which would embarrass her to death.
Closing her eyes, she clung to self-control.
A few moments later, Buck sauntered into the office and closed the door behind him.
“Did you kill him?” she demanded.
“Hell, no. He’s an island icon. They’d lynch me.”
She lifted her head and waited a moment for the world to stop swimming in the adrenaline sea. “He was on my plane! He tried to get on my bed! And he was roaring at me….”
“Roaring?”
“Roaring.”
He started laughing.
She managed a glare and resisted the urge to throttle him. “What’s so funny?”
“Well, Sticks, alligators roar for only one reason.”
“What? They want to eat what they see?”
“Nope.” He grinned around the ever-present cigar. “It’s a mating call.”
Hannah’s jaw dropped. It was entirely possible that it dropped all the way to the floor, but she didn’t bother checking. “What?” she asked finally, hoarsely.
“I guess he thinks you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever seen.”
“Oh. My. God.” Hannah put her head in her hands.
“Hey, it’s a compliment.”
“What? That he thinks I look like an alligator?”
Buck chuckled. “Relax. I’ll get you some coffee and breakfast. He’ll hang around for a while, then wander off to a cool pond before he overheats.”
“He was on my plane!”
“So you said.”
She really, really wanted to draw and quarter this guy. No sympathy. No human feeling. Laughing at her fright. Wasn’t she entitled to be frightened when a huge alligator appeared beside her bed? Only a fool would be sanguine about that!
“You’re crazy!” she declared finally, a wimp-out when compared to strangling him.
“Probably.” He didn’t appear at all disturbed. “Blame it on the tropical air.”
“You must have blacked out one too many times.”
That got his attention and he glared at her. “I was a Top Gun, Sticks. I never blacked out.”
“Maybe you just didn’t know it.”
“Flying what I was flying, I’d have known it.” He scowled at her. “What’s with you, anyway? I told you Buster’s a fixture around here.”
“Not on my plane, he isn’t.”
All of a sudden, Buck’s frown slipped into a cockeyed grin. “You must smell real good to him.”
That was the point at which, if some weapon had been handy, she would have landed herself in prison for life. The only alternative was to storm out, but before she lifted her rump from her seat, Buster’s roar sounded outside.
Buck shook his head. “He’s really determined.”
“Tell him I’m not interested in his species.”
Buck, still grinning, asked, “What species are you interested in?”
“Nothing from Mars,” she shot back.
“Ho! You read that stuff?”
“Shut your mouth, Shanahan, before I shut it for you.”
“You know something, Sticks? My mouth is usually shut. It would help if you would stop provoking me.”
“What? Now it’s my fault you’re an idiot?”
He put his hands on his hips, and now she could no longer read his face. The tip of his cigar bobbed up and down as if he were chomping rapidly on it.
“You,” he said finally, “are walking proof of why I avoid Venusians.”
“If I’m lucky, the mother ship will rescue me soon.”
“It won’t be soon enough for me.” With that he walked out of the office, leaving her alone to stew in her own juices.
The last of the adrenaline washed out of her system, and she crumpled like a deflated balloon.
She didn’t need this.
AS BUCK STRODE toward the hangar, hoping that the schematics would reveal some kind of quick fix for Hannah Lamont’s plane so he could get her out of here as swiftly as possible, Buster was shambling away into the shade of the tropical foliage in the direction of the nearest pond. He’d spend the rest of the day there, keeping cool and dining on the occasional fish or too-slow bird.
Damn woman, he thought. She even had Buster confused. Whatever had made the gator board her plane? Or go into the hangar to begin with? Buster was far too canny a beast to box himself in like that.
Shaking his head, Buck entered the hangar and marched over to the computer. Sometime during the night, the download had finished, leaving him with a heap of schematics to run over.
He sighed as he looked at the printout. Personally, he preferred the older planes. Simpler. Easier to repair. He could even machine parts himself for his DC-3. That stack of printout was nothing but an indictment of modern complexity.
Then he felt like a hypocrite. After all, he’d flown some of the most complex machines in the world, and had loved it. He just didn’t think he could repair one with the facilities at hand.
Bending, he lifted the stack from the basket on the floor and carried it over to the metal desk, where he dropped it. Switching on the desk lamp, he sat and began to pore over the schematics, checking for the likeliest point of failure before he started tracing the system.
Craig arrived on the dot of eight as he always did. He was probably the only person on this island, apart from Buck, who believed in being prompt. Everyone else seemed to suffer from a “whenever” mentality.
Which was fine for everyone else. It would have driven Buck up the wall in an employee, however. Sometimes he thought he just ought to give up and live on mañana time like the rest of the world. It would probably be better for his general health, not to mention his teeth.
“You’re looking uptight, boss,” Craig said, the first words out of his mouth.
“You’d be uptight if you had to deal with that vixen.”
“Yeah?” Craig grinned. “Got you on your toes, huh?”
“She’s got me p.o.’d is what she’s got me. And while I’m on the subject, can you tell me what the hell Buster was doing in the hangar?”
“In here?”
“Yeah. What’s more, he was on the Lear this morning. In fact, he was Hannah’s alarm clock.”
Craig’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not kidding. Big as life, there he was, and what’s more, he was making his mating call.”
Craig’s eyes widened, then he started to laugh. Much as he wanted to stay annoyed, Buck started to laugh, too.
“The gator has the hots for her?” Craig choked out as he laughed. “Nobody’s going to believe this!”
“Well, I saw it.”
Craig chuckled. “Hey, did you hear on the radio? Tom Regan dropped thirteen hundred to Bill Anstin last night.”
“You’re kidding,” Buck said. “Tom’s not great, but he ought to be able to clean Anstin’s clock. What happened?”
“Anstin was feeling cocky after playing here yesterday, so he and Tom Regan were playing five-ten-limit at the casino until the tourists left. Regan challenged Anstin to a heads-up match. Five-ten, no-limit. Thousand dollar buy-in. Regan was down three hundred and decided to rebuy, then two hands later he’s holding King-Queen on a flop of King-King-Nine. He pushes it all in—”
“And the other guy had pocket Nines,” Hannah said.
Buck hadn’t heard her approach, and turned. “What’re you doing here?”
“I heard him come in,” she said, angling her head toward Craig, “and heard the two of you laughing. I thought I’d check and see if y’all have made any progress on my jet.”
“Ah,” Buck said, pointing to the stack of schematics. “Not yet.”
“But I’m right, aren’t I?” she said, turning to Craig.
He nodded. “Yeah, Anstin had nines full.”
Buck couldn’t resist a smile. As much as he hated to see Bill Anstin win, it was even better to hear that Tom Regan’s three kings had cost him a thousand dollars against Anstin’s full house of three nines and two kings. Regan was the island’s mayor, and Anstin owned the casino. The two of them were, in Buck’s view, trying to ruin Treasure Island by turning it into a major tourist resort. And that was what yesterday’s card game had been about.
Just as bad, Regan and Anstin kept hounding Buck to waive the landing fees for the tourist charter planes that Anstin booked. And Buck simply couldn’t afford to do that. It was a long-running bone of contention, and anything that made either of them miserable was just fine with Buck.
