Old Dogs, New Tricks

by Douglas Richardson

Genres: Crime Fiction; Financial Thrillers

Synopsis

A Respectable Family Turns to a Life of Crime

Forced into bitter and boring retirement solely because of advancing age, world-renowned architect Victor Harding retreats to his bucolic lakefront estate, a majestic house once owned by notorious Chicago gangster Bugsy Moran.

He soon learns that his idyllic dream home is a house with astonishing secrets.

After a series of family catastrophes and devastating financial setbacks, and now struggling to support his fractured family and hold on to his beloved house, Victor finds himself sucked into a life of crime. Trapped in a dangerous alliance with the treacherous leader of a local crime gang, he desperately seeks a way out.

As Bugsy Moran' s legacy reveals startling surprises, Victor Harding' s life is thrust into increasingly bizarre and ever more dangerous directions.

A gold standard in more ways than one...

In this smart and stylish psychological thriller, the first in the Victor Harding Adventure Series by award-winning novelist Douglas Richardson, readers are pulled into the Harding family's life of high crimes and misdemeanors, well as the colorful characters' efforts to stay one step ahead of their pursuers...and stay alive.

 

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Release date: August 22, 2023

Publisher: Torchflame Books

Print pages: 424

Sample

Lake Central Flight 153

SOMETHING IS STRANGE HERE. From the frost-covered outdoor observation deck of Oshkosh’s Wittman Regional Airport, I watch for my brother Colin’s Chicago-to-Oshkosh Lake Central flight. I spot a speck in the distance off to my left, coming in from the east. It’s the usual antiquated Lake Central puddle-jumper, a dead plane brought back to life with the installation of modern engines. Now, as Flight 153 descends and lines up on the final approach, I see that something is definitely amiss.

The airliner wears Lake Central’s bright chrome yellow, but the shape seems wrong and it’s flying at a peculiar angle. The aircraft does not flare and lift its nose as it comes in for its landing approach, but rather it flies directly past the tower, wheels down, no more than one hundred feet off the runway, the right wing canted high in the air.

I get a clear look, and I am horror-struck. What I see is…grotesque.

Flight 153 has a huge bulge sticking out from its right side, a few feet behind the co-pilot’s window. Clearly, the plane has collided with something, and a huge piece of that something is now embedded in the right side of the yellow plane’s fuselage like an ugly twisted tumor. Protruding from the tumor is…I blink to clear my vision…the tail of another airplane. A small plane’s entire tail assembly, rudder and elevators, bright maroon, is sticking almost straight out from the yellow passenger plane’s flank.

Collie’s plane has T-boned a Cessna. The windshield on the co-pilot’s side is missing. The right propeller is still turning, but black smoke and a lick of orange flame stream from the turboprop’s exhaust, a sure sign that an engine has swallowed something.

My involuntary cry is drowned out by a piercing klaxon coming from the terminal, a deafening whoop-whoop-whoop as Flight 153 flashes by the tower, banks sharply to the left, and heads back away from the airport. My brother is a dead man, I think. My God, I’m going to outlive my little brother. I’m going to watch him die.

Q

Collie had called me a week before, his voice a hoarse whisper. He sounded as if he was afraid he was being overheard. “Got a quiet tip from one of the board members, Victor. The guy says there’s a move afoot to ease me out. Monfried has been throwing marbles under my horse, apparently none too subtly.”

“Who’s Monfried?”

“Yeah, I guess I’ve never really gone over my current situation with you in detail, Victor. Stephen Monfried is the General Manager of The Landings Club. He’s responsible for its six golf courses and four clubhouses down here. As Director of Golf, I report to him. In addition to giving lessons, I run overall golf operations, manage the pro shops, and coordinate with the grounds people. But Monfried is the chief honcho. What he recommends, The Landings Club Board accepts. Classic white-haired southern boy. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”

“And what’s he recommending?”

“I’m not sure what his agenda or his time frame is. He calls me into his office this morning,

out of the blue, ‘just to check in, ya know’. Real off-hand like, he says all the members really like me and the club ‘deeply values the ten years I’ve been put in’, but that the club also has to start ‘looking to the future’. Swear I could hear an ominous organ chord in the background.”

“Wow,” I said. “Sure sounds like he’s teeing something up—no pun intended. Do you think he’d actually fire you—or get the board to fire you?”

“Oh, no. Nothing as crass as that, nothing that would rile up my supporters, and I have a few. The club runs a real PR risk if they humiliate me publicly after all my years here. But my source says they are talking about bringing in ‘an additional senior teaching pro’, someone to ‘expand their capabilities at the top level’. This is not a ‘we’re thinking about it’ thing, Vic. Apparently, it’s a done-deal thing. All this has been done behind my back.”

“You know who they’re bringing in?”

“Yep, nice young guy named John Whittle. I know him, played him a couple of times last year in regional tournaments. He knocked my socks off. He’s past his best years, but he still qualifies for the big ones and can crack the top fifty now and again. No doubt, Vic, Whittle will be a strong membership draw, and they sure need that right now.”

“But you get to keep your job, right? You’re a lot more than just a teaching pro. So why not let Whittle take over some of that? You get to ease back some, let Whittle play ego games with the young bucks. What’s wrong with that?”

“You don’t understand how it works down here. Things will be all nicey-nice…at least ‘til the end of the fiscal year. Whittle plays nice, Monfried plays nice, like ‘hey, this is a win-win, right?’ Then, when the club starts a new budget year, suddenly it’s all, ‘Holy cow, the whole golf industry is in trouble and we’re losing memberships as the old coots here die off and golf memberships are down all across the country and here at the club we’re actually thinking of closing two of our courses and gee, Colin, we’re gonna have to make some major cuts and so sorry and here’s three months’ severance. We’ll hang

your picture in our Hall of Champions.’”

“Colin,” I had said, as calmly as I could. “Get your ass on an airplane and get up here. Now. It is time for some serious strategizing.”

“Can’t, Vic. Got a week full of lessons scheduled.”

“Cancel them, Collie. Say there’s been a death in the family. Say you’ll be gone at least a week.”

Q

Now, Lake Central Flight 153 limps back east away from the airport, trailing smoke, its right wing tilted up at an odd forty-five-degree angle, its left wing low and drooping. I race for the ice-covered outside stairway that leads to the tarmac in front of the main hangar. I feel my feet trying to slide out from under me as I hurdle down two flights of stairs. At the bottom, I find a metal door that says No Admittance. I tear at the handle, and to my surprise, it opens, triggering an alarm.

I find myself out on the flight line, now lightly dusted with snow, just outside the gaping overhead door of Wittman’s huge maintenance hangar. Someone is shouting at me. The klaxon continues to bellow, drowning out all other sounds.

Now well past the far end of the runway, Flight 153 banks around, again heading toward the terminal, still flying with its right wing cocked up at that crazy angle. The right engine is now fully enveloped in flames. The plane descends toward the end of the concrete runway in a series of jerks, and now its nose tips up. The pilot is actually going to try to land an airplane with another airplane sticking out of it.

Everything seems to happen in slow motion.

As the turboprop descends to land, its right wing drops sharply. The moment the plane is level, it appears to drop out of the sky. From an altitude of perhaps ten feet, Flight 153 slams down into the runway and bounces back into the air. The tail assembly of the impaled Cessna breaks free, spins backward, then caroms off Flight 153’s tall vertical fin. It pinwheels high into the air, twisting and spinning and glinting maroon

 in the sun.

Flight 153 comes down hard on its nose wheel, bounces back up into the air, and finally touches down on the blacktop shoulder that borders the long concrete runway. I can hear the thrust reversers on the turbines engaging; I see the propellers appear to change color as the pilot shifts the pitch of the blades. The backwash from the thrust reversers snuffs out the flames coming from the right engine—Yes! I yell—leaving a detached sheet of orange floating briefly behind the plane. The orange blob of fire looks like a punctured balloon, zigzagging about. Then it vanishes.

The plane slews hard right, straightens itself on the runway for a moment, then seems to overcorrect and swerves off to the left. The pilot jumps on the brakes—I can hear the tortured screech—and now all five tires stream dark gray smoke. There is a loud bang! as one of the main landing carriage tires explodes. As the plane skids by me, I think I see a flash of turquoise in the first window just behind the mangled cockpit. That’s Colin. That is Colin’s shirt. Collie always wears turquoise polo shirts. When he flies. When he dies.

From the main hangar, a blur of red and silver flashes into view on my right: fire engine, siren screaming, men in gray pants still sliding into their bright yellow reflective fire-coats as they sprint to clamber aboard.

A hundred yards past me, the plane’s left landing gear slides off the blacktop and onto the grass. As the left wheel digs into the soft earth, Flight 153 jerks violently around, pivoting around the tip of its wing. It continues its pirouette until it is pointing back down the runway. Then it finally stops.

The left landing gear is buried in mud, bent under the plane, making it look like a crippled old man struggling to regain footing after a fall. The fire truck now circles the plane, looking for something to extinguish. Finally, for appearances’ sake, the fire crew sprays a weak stream of foam, nothing more than a piss, really, on the exhaust outlet on the right engine. Then they stand around looking at each other, awaiting further orders that will never come.

I stand rooted to the tarmac of the flight line, perhaps forty yards from the plane,

which is groaning and creaking and ticking. My hands are clenched; my nails cut into my palms. My eyes flood with tears and intense weakness washes over me. I think my knees might buckle. Someone rushes by me toward the plane. Someone else is yelling, “Hey, you! Old man!” but I can’t hear the rest, don’t know where it’s coming from. The Klaxon continues its alarm.

Flight 153’s fold-out cabin door suddenly pops open, and the stairway begins to unfold like a giant articulated knee. It has not yet touched the ground when Colin Harding tumbles out of the doorway—of course he’s the first out; Collie always sits in the first row—and, totally out of control, somersaults down the steps onto the tarmac, arms and legs flailing. He lands hard on his right shoulder, struggles to his hands and knees, and begins to vomit violently.

Q

Later, as we sit on the blue vinyl seats in the Oshkosh Airport departure lounge, I can’t get Colin to stop sobbing. He’s sixty-six years old and he’s crying like a baby. He has a yellow blanket with a Lake Central logo draped over his shoulders, and he slumps as if drained of all energy. Colin shudders violently again, launching half his coffee onto the front of his turquoise polo shirt, which is already covered in blood. Not his blood, he tells me.

Some Lake Central functionary is waiting to talk with Colin, but I keep waving her away. The other thirteen passengers have now disembarked, and some appear as stunned as Colin. Others clearly are just learning that they have survived a mid-air collision and are shaking their heads in disbelief. One woman has dropped to her knees in front of the refreshment counter and, head bowed, is praying the rosary. A group of five dark-suited businessmen moves rapidly down the concourse, rushing to get as far away from the scene as possible. The remaining passengers are sitting in the gate area, still in murmured conversations with Lake Central representatives or federal investigators or family members who have been allowed through security and are standing about wringing their hands.

The door to the flight line pops open, and two ashen-faced men in blue slacks and white short-sleeved shirts with bright blue Mickey Mouse-grade epaulets step into the gate area. The pilot and—is this a miracle or what?

!—the completely uninjured co-pilot try to hurry by. The small crowd stands and applauds, but the pilot shakes his head vehemently and hurries away.

Colin doesn’t stand, can’t stand. He, too, shakes his head hard. “Victor,” he sobs, “the Cessna pilot’s face was right in front of me, smashed into his instrument panel. His arm was in my lap.” He looks at me, his face ashen, a rigid mask of horror. “I had to fly fifteen minutes with this dead guy’s bloody arm in my lap.”

Q

I drive Collie to Oshkosh Memorial Hospital to have him checked out. He sits in my BMW’s passenger seat, panting like a dog, his head lolling from side to side. He won’t respond when I try to talk to him. We wait an hour in the ER to be seen, and Colin continues to hyperventilate. Finally, an extremely kindly Physician’s Assistant takes him back for an exam, telling me to stay in the waiting room. A half-hour later, they’re back. The PA says that his shoulder injury is probably just a strain and not a dislocation or muscle tear, but she straps it up anyway and parks it in a sling. “I’d rest it for two weeks,” she says.

Other than that, she says, Colin seems physically uninjured, although his hands continue to shake in periodic short jerky spasms. She administers a mild sedative, and as it takes hold, the spasms soften, and Collie stops shaking his head from side to side. He is still conscious when the orderlies hoist him from the ER wheelchair and slide him into my car, but by the time we hit Route 23 moments later, he is out cold.

As I drive around the front circle at The Boulders, Odell Todd trots up with his goofy grin, ready to greet Collie and grab his luggage. Odie and Colin like each other a lot, and Collie never treats my yardman as anything but a peer and friend.

Before I can say anything, Odie throws open Colin’s door, looks at Colin’s ashen face, and then freezes, his arms raised as if he’s been caught in a stick-up. “What the hell!” he exclaims. “Victor, is he dead?”

“Crash-landing. Everybody lived, but he got seriously shaken up. C’mon, Odie, help me

get him up to bed. He’s going to be out awhile, and believe me, that’s a good thing. He’ll be okay, but he’s just been through a really crazy scare today.”

Q

The next day’s Oshkosh Daily Northwestern makes a hero out of Tee Bauer, Flight 153’s pilot, describing how he alerted the tower with his fly-by, kept the plane’s right wing tipped up to counterbalance the Cessna’s extra weight on the landing approach, and then cut power to drop the wing level just as the plane touched down. Based on where the Cessna’s twisted wing was found in a farmer’s field near the town of Black Earth, Tee Bauer had flown Flight 153 thirty-one miles with another airplane embedded in his own.

Co-pilot Stephen Mosley is one very lucky man, the Northwestern says. He had been at the controls, with Bauer reading the landing checklist, when the Cessna smashed into Flight 153’s galley area, not more than three feet behind where Mosley sat. The bulkhead between the galley and the cockpit buckled but took the brunt of the impact without collapsing. Mosley’s seat was pushed forward, and his head hit the windshield, but somehow, he escaped totally unhurt.

The Northwestern article contains plenty of quotes from grateful passengers, plenty of hosannas, and plenty of thank-yous and thank-Gods. Colin’s is not among them. He was still out cold when the reporter called. Taking the advice of the National Transportation Safety Board and his lawyer, Tee Bauer has declined to be interviewed.

Two days later, things turn sour as the story unspools. The collision was Flight 153’s fault, the Daily Northwestern’s follow-up story claims. The tower, it turned out, had warned Bauer and co-pilot Mosley three times of local general aviation traffic, but they had maintained their landing approach flight path “without attending to local flight conditions and advisories.” Flight 153 descended directly on top of the Cessna, whose pilot, nineteen-year-old Wayne Sampson of Neenah, never knew what hit him. Neither did his twenty-one old

sister, Ramona, and his best friend, Larry Scott. All dead, all crushed, all needing their remains to be cut out of the wreckage of their crumpled Cessna.

After an initial hue and cry about adolescent amateur pilots joyriding around the sky, reporters learn that Wayne Sampson had 350 hours of flight time in the Cessna, a twenty-year-old model 172 that he had bought and paid for himself. Instructors described him as a careful, vigilant pilot, one of their best students ever. An anonymous tip lets it be known that Tee Bauer had two previous warnings from Lake Central, as well as one disciplinary action for landing on the wrong runway in Milwaukee, which resulted in his being suspended for a month. Before Lake Central’s lawyers shut him up, Stephen Mosley is quoted as saying they heard the small plane warnings, but their vision had been obscured by the afternoon sun reflecting off heavy bug splatters on Flight 153’s windshield. Given that the collision took place in January, this seems to be regarded by one and all as a singularly inept excuse.

Q

When Colin finally comes to, I try to give him his space, and let him come out of it at his own pace. Hospital social worker Anna Rosen has called to follow up on Colin. She tells me that a variety of emotional reactions are possible, from gratitude to denial, to wanting to give all his possessions away, to full-blown PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. “Different people respond to violent accidents in very different ways, Mr. Harding. Don’t push him, don’t press him to talk about it, but if he wants to talk, listen hard, and whatever you do, don’t brush it aside or tell him the worst is behind him now. That may not prove to be true.”

I call the golf pro shop at The Landings in Savannah and tell them that Colin has been involved in an airplane accident in Wisconsin, saying it is

uncertain when he will return. I say they should cancel his scheduled lessons for at least the next week and I tell them that he will check in regularly to keep them posted. I ask the assistant pro to emphasize to anyone who asks that Colin is fine, with no injuries, just taking a few days to shake it off. The assistant pro seems rather annoyed by the inconvenience; he does not send best wishes, saying only, “Okay, I’ll take care of it. Thanks for calling.”

I call Christine, not knowing quite what response to expect. Bosom buddies as kids, Colin and Christine have never been particularly close as adults (and given our six-year age difference, neither has ever been particularly close to me). The fact that Colin and Christine are twins does not seem to have much resonance these days. When he’s had a few drinks, Collie often refers to Christine as the Ice Goddess, which is not fair. My sister has always been an extraordinarily anxious person, a vulnerability she covers with a guarded aloofness. In her law practice, her surface armor serves her well. With her brother, it has led to an emotional chasm. Colin thinks Christine “has become very New York,” extremely materialistic, rather superficial, and not very reliable as a source of emotional support. This was particularly true during his wife’s terminal illness, when Colin felt Christine had left him high and dry to care for Susan alone. Their contact in recent years has been infrequent.

As I dial, I expect Christine to be standoffish. But hell, Collie’s her brother, and he just almost died, so maybe a little empathy will bubble up from the depths of Christine’s generally locked-down personality. But I’ll be surprised if it does at this stage of their lives.

Christine surprises me and rebuts my cynicism, respond­ing with genuine-sounding alarm and sympathy. She offers to fly out to Green Lake to “steady” her twin brother, but I know emotional outreach will be a stretch for her. Truth to tell, although Christine is an accomplished trusts and estates lawyer, constantly rendering advice to people anticipating or experiencing bereavement, her bedside manner is not so hot. She is a numbers person, a “quant” who thinks in terms of measures and metrics and rates of return. God never intended Christine to be a social worker or “people person.” Basically, a highly-defended introvert, she scoffs at people who speak of “meaningful relationships,” empowerment, spirituality, and continuous improvement. She has always insisted that people should “take me as I am,” the result being that most people have not taken to her at all. Over the years, Christine has remained isolated and autonomous.

Because of how she is hard-wired, and because I know Christine does not like Green Lake—or me—very much, I let her off the hook, saying I’ll let her know if I think her tender ministrations are needed. What Colin does not need right now is a hands-off person pretending to be a hands-on person. For her part, Christine clearly is relieved not to be put on “play-nice duty” for Colin. She says she’ll check in daily.

Q

A polite man—for some reason I picture him as a polite young man—calls from a Philadelphia law firm representing the U.S. Aviation Insurance Group—the notorious USAIG. I’ve had experience with similar insurers in construction cases, and my view of insurance companies is a dim one. I regard them as apologists for villains, exploiters of victims. All have the same strategy: deny, disclaim, and litigate until the enemy capitulates. Eventually, they settle the case for a pittance on the courthouse steps.

The young man says his client insures Lake Central Airlines, and he wonders if Colin Harding would consider a quick, quiet settlement for any claims that might arise with respect to the mid-air “incident.” No litigation, no need to engage and pay for counsel, just a fast and respectful resolution.

I decide not to put Colin on the phone, deciding I’ll handle this myself. “I’m Colin Harding,” I lie. “What sort of settlement amount does your client have in mind?”

“Well in light of the fact that no one on the plane suffered a serious injury, but mindful of the distress the incident might have caused, we are authorized to offer you a lump-sum settlement in the amount of $22,500.”

“Twenty-two five,” I say.

“Yes, that’s right,” says the young man, “upon execution of a complete release, of course.”

“Of course, a release, yes. Well, the consequences of my…incident remain a little speculative at this point. I’m not sure what additional symptoms or damages may emerge.”

“Well, I suppose that’s possible, but this way you have immediate cash in hand, and the whole

matter is behind you.”

“Hmmm. Would your client be open to a counteroffer?”

“Well, I don’t know. We try to be reasonable. Did you have a number in mind?”

“How about four hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars?”

I have to appreciate the young man’s aplomb. “Well, that amount is beyond my authority to negotiate. Would you be good enough to take my number and give me a call back if you should reconsider?”

“Yeah, I’ll sure do that.” ...