Impact (42 page)

“Yes, I do.”

“What is that opinion?”

Chambers had been on his feet for seconds. “Inadequate foundation, calls for a conclusion, invades the province of the jury, and is grossly speculative, Your Honor.”

Powell was shaking his head before the litany was complete. “Overruled, Mr. Chambers.”

Tollison was suddenly colossal. “What is your opinion, Mr. Livingood? Was this crash survivable for a passenger sitting in the tourist portion of that airplane?”

Chambers was apoplectic. “May I be heard, Your Honor? This man has never rendered an opinion on survivability in his
life
. This is not proximate cause, this is idle speculation. There is no detail as to the basis for the opinion, nothing on which the jury can assess the value of the statement.
Please
, Your Honor. This is inappropriate.”

The judge shook his head. “I'm going to allow the opinion, Mr. Chambers. If you want to assail it, do so on cross-examination.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Tollison said “Again, Mr. Livingood. Was this crash survivable?”

Livingood's nod was adamant. “For passengers sitting anywhere behind the forward bulkhead—that is, for anyone in the so-called economy class in that airplane—the crash was definitely survivable. Under both definitions I gave.”

As though a wire had been unplugged, Tollison became affable. “Thank you, Mr. Livingood. Your Honor, I have another area to develop at this point, but perhaps it would be a good time to break for lunch.”

Judge Powell glanced at his watch and nodded.

By prearrangement, they meet for lunch at a table behind the staircase of a North Beach restaurant purchased out of the proceeds from the wrongful-death suit filed after the demise of the owner's wife in the San Diego midair. “Every time he sees me, he starts to cry,” Hawthorne warned as he told Tollison of the meeting place, “but the food is worthy of the sentiment.”

The prediction has proved true. As he awaits their orders beneath the creaking staircase, the proprietor dotes on Hawthorne like a toady. “This man,” he effuses in a gush that dragoons all four persons at the table into a pep club, “is a saint. Without him I am a prune, a raisin, a pile of dust.” Blotting his eyes with the corner of his apron, he gestures toward the noisy tables to their front, invisible from the nook behind the stairs. “It is Alec who gave me this—a reason to live until I am united with my Loretta in the life that follows this one. So eat. We serve only Carmine's best.”

Keith Tollison and Laura Donahue exchange commiserating glances above antipasto and Chianti. Though it is their first intimate moment in weeks, Tollison is unable to take advantage. In a delirium of duty, his mind springing back to the morning's session and ahead to the afternoon's, he cannot abandon his anxiety long enough to frame a sentence that will express what he wants the occasion to produce. From her rapt appraisal of the food that emerges from the kitchen on a squadron of flying saucers, Laura is less essentially preoccupied. Tollison sighs. How far his life has strayed from what he thought it had finally become.

He leaves Laura to her meal and asks Hawthorne to evaluate the morning. “We got in what we need to make a good summation,” Hawthorne responds. “Which is what direct examination is all about.”

“But?” Tollison prompts, alert to the implicit reservation.

Hawthorne lowers his voice, as though they were joined in conspiracy. “You need to relax. You're making the jury nervous and making Powell doubt his decision to do me a favor. You have to prove you're not going to embarrass him in this thing, Keith, and the way to do it is take charge. You don't have to know what you're doing, you just have to
act
like you do. Otherwise, you won't keep Powell on your side. And that's your most important job.”

“I thought he threw some rulings my way that he didn't have to.”

“Sure he did; that's his style. He'll do the same for Chambers when
he's
offering the evidence.”

“Why?”

“Powell worships juries. He believes they develop a collective genius that lets them wade through hip-deep bullshit and come out with something approximating perfection. So he lets the bullshit flow.”

“Is he ever reversed?”

Hawthorne shakes his head. “Not often. The system can barely digest a crash case once. A retrial would clog things up for years.”

“I still don't see why we had to dismiss against the FAA,” Tollison complains, out of a sense that the more targets there are, the better his chance of hitting one.

Hawthorne sips his wine and, amid the newly complex maneuver, soaks his beard. “The government can be sued for administering its rules improperly, but it can't be sued for failing to have any rules at all, so the fact that the FAA hasn't adopted adequate crashworthy standards—hasn't even included the term
crashworthy
in its regulations—isn't anything we can nail them for. It's called the discretionary function exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act.”

“Seems unfair.”

“It wasn't long ago you couldn't sue the government for anything: sovereign immunity and all that medieval nonsense. So when it comes to the feds, we count our paltry blessings.”

Hawthorne turns to Livingood and begins to discuss a point about his coming testimony. When the men are absorbed with each other, Tollison returns to Laura.

His ego revived by Hawthorne's easy self-assurance, he places his arm across the back of her chair.

She is ethereal in a jersey skirt and sky-blue blouse. Her fuzzy focus—sediment of Chianti and exhaustion—makes her as appealing as a drowsy child who is fighting to stay awake. “How are you holding up?”

Her attempt to smile is ponderous. “Okay, I guess. How about you?”

“You've been watching the jury—you tell me.”

For a moment the eyes throw off their strain. “They like you, I think.”

Pleased that she has bothered to be extravagant, Tollison leans to whisper. “Do they like Livingood as well?”

“That's asking a bit much, isn't it?”

Partners prospering in the joke, they look slyly at its object and share a giggle. The moment is so similar to many they shared when their secret was an exclusive toy, he forgets they no longer have a secret to enjoy. “Are you keeping up with the testimony okay?”

“I think so.”

“Good. When you think I'm making a mistake, let me know, particularly if it's something the jury seems upset about. I can get overbearing sometimes.”

She raises a sardonic brow. “Really?”

He regrets supposing he can portray himself in guises she hasn't seen already. “I wish we could go someplace and watch old movies,” he whispers slyly, teasing her, and testing.

He is grateful when she nods. “I need this to be over, too. I keep remembering high school—I had a bit part in the senior play. The waiting was such torture, by the time I heard my cue I'd forgotten my lines. I'm afraid by the time I have to testify I won't know my name.”

“The jury will love you,” he predicts, then is dismayed when her mouth hardens as though he has betrayed her.

“They don't have to
love
me,” she mimics, “they just have to do what's right.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Chambers made it sound like I'm a thief. And your girlfriend makes me
feel
like one.”

Tollison frowns at the reference. “Brenda?”

Laura nods. “Didn't you see her come in the courtroom at the end? What's she
doing
, in heaven's name? She's hovering over us like a vulture.”

“I guess she wants to make sure we stick to the script.”

“What script?”

“The one that omits any reference to your marriage.”

Laura twists her napkin into the semblance of a noose. “Nothing is what it seems—I'm not a good wife, Jack's not a successful businessman, you're not merely my lawyer. We're in the Twilight Zone, aren't we, Keith?”

Tollison shakes his head. “We're just in court.” A moment later he places his palm over her hand. “What will you do after it's over? Have you decided?”

“It depends on the jury.”

“Don't base anything on that. Even if you win, it could be years before Jack gets his money.”

She pulls her hand away. “Time seems to have lost a lot of significance lately.”

Although it is likely that she has just declared there is no room for him in her life, now or ever, Tollison is strangely calm, as if what each of them is saying comes from a clever melodrama rather than their real lives.
“I've
decided something,” he announces impulsively.

“What?”

“I'm going to leave Altoona. Start over somewhere else.”

“Where?” she blurts, her look suddenly wild and eager. “Where are you going
to?”

Though the question throbs with urgency, he can't tell whether its source is concern or merely gossip. “I'm not sure,” he answers lamely.

He is waiting for her reaction when a hand touches his shoulder. “Show time,” Hawthorne announces.

Tollison looks at his watch. They are due in court in fifteen minutes. When he looks at Laura she is nibbling lukewarm tortellini, no trace of emotion in her face. Tollison hurries to the street to call a cab.

The proceedings are under way on time. Livingood is on the stand; Hawthorne is hidden behind a broad-beamed matron and her hive of hair. Judge Powell gavels the room to order.

“Mr. Livingood, is the name of Colonel John Paul Stapp familiar to you?” Tollison begins, relieved to focus on exploits more noble than his own.

“Yes, indeed.”

“How do you know Colonel Stapp?”

“I don't know him, I know
of
him. He is famous for a series of experiments having to do with the capacity of the human body to survive great physical stresses.”

“Are his calculations accepted by specialists in the field of biomedical research, as well as in various engineering disciplines?”

“They are.”

“This morning, in defining a survivable crash, you used the phrase ‘within the limits of human tolerances to abrupt deceleration.' Do Colonel Stapp's experiments bear upon those tolerances?”

“They certainly do. They define the outer limits.”

Chambers is again irate. “Your Honor, I object to this line of questioning. Mr. Stapp, whoever he is, is not on plaintiff's witness list.”

For the first time, Tollison experiences a whiff of victory—Chambers is reacting from a genuine sense of danger rather than a calculated ploy. Buoyed, he gets to his feet “Counsel is well aware of Colonel Stapp's importance, Your Honor. If I may be allowed to continue, I will demonstrate that the colonel's experiments have a crucial bearing on this case.”

The judge nods. “You may proceed. Subject to a motion to strike if relevance is not shown.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Livingood? Tell us about Mr. Stapp.”

Livingood crosses his arms with obvious satisfaction. “In 1954, when Stapp was in the air force, he built a sled and placed it on a track, sort of a car frame on a railroad. The sled was powered by nine rockets, each capable of forty-five hundred pounds of thrust. Not just once but several times, Stapp would strap himself to the sled, wrap himself with safety belts, clamp his teeth onto a block of rubber, and fire the rockets. In the final test in the series, the sled reached a speed of six hundred thirty-two miles per hour, faster than any man had ever traveled on land up to that time.”

From his look, Hawley Chambers has become impossibly weary, though Tollison knows he dreads the jury's rapt attention. The objection warbles with sarcasm. “I didn't realize this was story hour, Your Honor.”

Judge Powell scratches his ear. “I'm not aware of the inclusion of that objection in the code, Mr. Chambers.”

“Then I object that this tale—more accurately, this
fairy
tale—is hearsay.”

“Overruled.”

Tollison prompts his witness. “So Colonel Stapp went fast in a sled. What does that have to do with flight 617?”

“It wasn't the speed that was important; it was the stop. The experiment was arranged so that water brakes near the end of the track brought the sled from top speed to zero in just over one second. In other words, the experiment came as close as possible to running into a brick wall at the speed of sound.”

The crowd murmurs in wonder; the jurors exchange blinks of incredulity; Tollison expands the moment. “Let me see if I understand. The man sitting on this sled is going six hundred miles an hour. A second later he's stopped cold.”

“Right.”

“Did he survive?”

Livingood nods. “Thanks to the safety belts, Stapp suffered only repairable eye damage and some aches and pains.”

“What was the practical result of his experiments?”

“There were two. Because Stapp proved that, contrary to the belief of many, seat belts wouldn't cut a person in half in a high-speed accident, the mandatory auto seat belt law of 1966 was passed. More important for our purposes, Stapp proved humans could withstand deceleration stresses in excess of forty times the force of gravity.”

“Tell the jury how such forces apply to the crash of flight 617.”

“Gravity force, or g force, is a measurement often used to determine structural strength. Seats in commercial aircraft, for example, are required by regulation to be attached to the airframe in a manner that will withstand a certain level of g forces forward and sideward in the event of a crash. That is, they are to remain in place if the forces applied to them don't exceed the designated g number.”

“So seats in an airplane must be built to stay attached to the airplane in the event of a sudden stop as long as the forward momentum of the seat and its passenger doesn't exceed the specified times the force of gravity.”