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different aircraft models.”
    Dolan began to warm to his task. He got down on his knees and examined every square inch of the nose gear. At one point he had Pitt help him roll it to a new position. Five minutes went by and he didn’t utter a word.
    Pitt finally broke the silence. “Does it tell you anything?”
    “A great deal.” Dolan straightened up. “But not, unfortunately, the jackpot answer.”
    “The odds favor the proverbial wild-goose chase,” said Pitt. “I don’t feel right putting you to all this trouble.”
    “Nonsense,” Dolan assured him. “This is what John Q. Public pays me for. The FAA has dozens of missing aircraft on file whose fates have never been solved. Any time we have an opportunity to mark a case closed, we jump at it.”
    “How do we go about laying our fingers on the make of aircraft?”
    “Ordinarily I’d call in research technicians from our engineering division. But I think I’ll take a stab in the dark and try a shortcut. Phil Devine, maintenance chief over at United Airlines, is a walking encyclopedia on aircraft. If anyone can tell us at a glance, he can.”
    “He’s that good?” asked Pitt.
    “Take my word for it,” Dolan said with a knowing smile. “He’s that good.”
    “A photographer you ain’t. Your lighting is lousy.” A nonfiltered cigarette dangled from the lips of Phil Devine as he studied the Polaroid pictures Dolan had taken of the nose gear. Devine
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    was a W. C. Fields-type character-heavy through the middle, with a slow, whining voice.
    “I didn’t come here for an art review,” replied Dolan. “Can you put a make on the gear or not?”
    “It looks vaguely familiar, kind of like the assembly off an old B-twenty-nine.”
    “That’s not good enough.”
    “What do you expect from a bunch of fuzzy pictures-an absolute, irrefutable ID?”
    “I had hoped for something like that, yes,” Dolan replied, unruffled.
    Pitt was beginning to wonder if he was about to referee a fight. Devine read the uneasy look in his eyes.
    “Relax, Mr. Pitt,” he said, and smiled. “Harvey and I have a standing rule: we’re never civil to each other during working hours. However, as soon as five o’clock rolls around, we cut the hard-assing and go out and have a beer together.”
    “Which I usually pay for,” Dolan injected dryly.
    “You government guys are in a better position to moonlight,” Devine fired back.
    “About the nose gear …” Pitt said, probing quietly.
    “Oh yeah, I think I might dig up something.” Devine rose heavily from behind his desk and opened a closet filled from floor to ceiling with thick black-vinyl-bound books. “Old maintenance manuals,” he explained. “I’m probably the only nut in commercial aviation who hangs on to them.” He went directly to one volume buried among the mass and began thumbing through its pages. After a minute he found what he was looking for and passed the open book across the desk. “That close enough for you?”
    Pitt and Dolan leaned forward and examined an exploded-view line drawing of a nose-gear assembly.
    “The wheel castings, parts, and dimensions”-Dolan tapped the page with his finger-“they’re one and the same.”
    “What aircraft?” asked Pitt.
    “Boeing Stratocruiser,” answered Devine. “Actually I wasn’t that far off when I guessed a B-twenty-nine. The Stratocruiser was based on the bomber’s design. The Air Force version was designated a C-ninety-seven.”
    Pitt turned to the front of the manual and found a picture of the plane in flight. A strange-looking aircraft: its two-deck fuselage had the config—
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    uration of a great double-bellied whale.
    “I recall seeing these as a boy,” Pitt said. “Pan American used them.”
    “So did United,” said Devine. “We flew them on the Hawaii run. She was a damned fine airplane.”
    “Now what?” Pitt turned to Dolan.
    “Now I send the nose gear’s serial number to Boeing, in Seattle, along with