Skyhook (44 page)

“Fine. We all do that at times. But would you kindly tell this poor little baby lawyer from the boondocks who doesn’t understand the real world where in those statements a reasonable man or woman can find any rational room for the interpretation that a so-called delicate dance was in progress that might lead to a good solution for Captain Rosen outside of litigation?”

Now we have the long-suffering, condescending sigh, Gracie thought, listening to him shift the receiver to the other ear as if trying to gather his thoughts on how to explain nuclear physics to the village idiot.

“You clearly don’t understand the process, Ms. O’Brien. You have to be very careful and diplomatic in dealing with these people. I deal with them all the time. I can’t come racing in every time they take a certificate action and accuse them of malfeasance and evil intent. I’d have no credibility left if I followed your method of draw, shoot, then aim. I’ve developed long-standing relationships with these folks, and what you’ve done imperils all of that. Now I have a lot of repair work to do, just to begin with.”

“What happened to being your client’s advocate, Mr. Greene?” she asked quietly.

“I resent that implication, young woman,” he shot back. “This is how we do it in the big city, and I agreed to help your client based on the obviously unwarranted assumption that you understood my value was more than just being an errand boy to file your papers in the Beltway. I get results over time by being careful and solicitous, and not by whacking them with a big stick at every opportunity.”

There’s no way I can win a battle with this windbag, she thought.

Either bare your neck, babe, or fire the bastard.

Gracie closed her eyes and forced herself to be obsequious. This is for the captain, she reminded herself, letting the thought echo and grow loud enough to drown out her own fury.

“Look, Mr. Greene, I’m sorry if I’ve made things more difficult, but how can we not sue them? They’re part of the U.S. government, and the government is messing around with the very evidence that can prove the charges they’ve leveled at Captain Rosen are absolutely false. Exculpatory evidence. I don’t see how talking to them further is going to preserve that wreckage.”

“Well, you know what? I guess that’s just going to have to be your problem, Counselor, because I’m no longer a party to this.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m withdrawing right here, right now. I’ll return your advance Monday.”

“Now, wait a minute. Please.”

“Ms. O’Brien, you’re a female bull in a china closet, and it’s my china closet.”

“I’m hardly a bull.”

“I wish you well. I wish your clients well. But I predict you’ve already cooked Captain Rosen’s goose with what you’ve done. The moment you named them in that complaint, you guaranteed that the FAA will fight to the death.”

“Mr. Greene, you accepted this case.”

“And I am withdrawing. I am not of counsel on any filing by my hand, and I’m out of here.”

“No! Please, listen to—”

The sound of a terminated connection rang in her ear and Gracie sat in stunned silence for a few seconds, feeling ill, and momentarily wondering whether to call back.

Shit!

She hated the word, but it seemed appropriate, and she decided she was far enough from any other ears to give voice to her feelings of anger and shame.

“Shit!”

Gracie sat for several minutes, breathing hard, her head pounding as she tried to push through the thicket of conflicting feelings and find something logical and rational to grab, a life ring in the rising tide of emotions that had overwhelmed her good sense and restraint.

You can’t punch out the world, kid! The metaphor was sufficiently incongruous to spark a laugh amid the darkness of the moment. She realized there were tears cascading down her face, and that unblinking evidence of lost control added to the burst of self-loathing that seemed to fill the small interior of the Corvette.

Her Vette. Her boat. Her ego. Her expectations. Her position.

All of it could collapse in a moment if she was booted out of Janssen and Pruzan. Lawyers were a dime a dozen, her salary was a rarity, and with all her new possessions, she was hanging off the edge now and wholly exposed financially, with almost nothing saved.

Why am I thinking about me? I’ve just imperiled the only family I’ve ever had.

She looked at the cell phone in her hand, the need to call April becoming almost irresistible. But April would be on the flight back to Seattle, and what could she say anyway? “Hi, old friend.

My lousy judgment and combative personality have just succeeded in losing the only lawyer in D.C. who could have made the FAA change their minds. Thanks to me, your dad is really screwed now.”

She laid the phone on the passenger seat and looked at the radio, wondering if the salvation of diversion would slake the pain.

No! Face this now! Figure this out! You’ve just started two federal lawsuits and want to file a third. What next?

A ragged breath shuddered her trim body, the feeling of fragility scaring her. I’m not supposed to feel like such a failure at twenty-six. Wasn’t it written somewhere that the enthusiasm and exuberance of youth can override anything? Focus, Gracie! Focus!

She had the strength to survive this and win. Hadn’t she survived? So many nights with her mother passed out on the couch, her father gone, the child the mother to the parent, and she’d said the same things to herself with less assurance. Survival now required self

confidence, and that self-confidence could stand on the shoulders of her past survival.

All right. So we’ve lost Greene. It may turn out for the best.

There are other aviation lawyers in D.C., if I need one. But why do I? Finesse didn’t work with the FAA. The game has changed.

Before, they had been trying to appease an agency that was angry for no apparent reason. Now they had evidence that could kill off two of the three charges, and the FAA’s claim that the captain had illegally flown in bad weather had been shaky from the start.

She mentally dammed the tide of fear and ran through the things she would need to do to carry the fight to Washington. And the first step, she realized with a deep and visceral shock, would be to talk to Ben Janssen and secure permission to go. The mere thought of that unavoidable encounter made her feel cold, igniting an unfamiliar buzzing in her head.

Gracie took a very deep breath and forced her hands back to the wheel and the shift lever. The first step was to return to her office, though she had a sick feeling it might be for the last time.

Mac MacAdams selected a paperback from the rack in the concourse bookshop and turned to pay for it, noticing a lovely young raven-haired woman finishing a similar transaction next to him.

The clerk slid her credit card back across the counter, the name, embossed in gold, suddenly visible.

April R. Rosen.

Mac smiled to himself, making it a point to avoid looking surprised.

He saw her stow the credit card and pull out a first-class Alaska Airlines ticket envelope that bore the same flight number as his.

Interesting. Just as I figured. She doesn’t give up easily.

Mac shifted his thoughts to the sudden trip to D.C., and his wife’s puzzled reaction.

“It’s an unofficial mission,” he’d explained. “That’s why I’m flying commercially and not taking an Air Force plane.”

“And, you can’t tell me what it’s about, of course.”

“You’re right. I can’t.”

The meeting with the Uniwave test-flight manager had been set for an hour before he had to leave for the airport. It had been almost amusing the way Dick Wilcox had sauntered into the Uniwave hangar all prepared to receive the chastened general’s humble apology. A few minutes later, he was leaving in near terror with the mission of calling Uniwave’s chairman to confess that he’d fabricated the whole story about General MacAdams being abusive.

It had taken no more than the copies of four credit card statements with circles around charges the man had never dreamed anyone could catch. The whole thing still felt dirty and wrong to Mac, but the last thing he needed was a civilian contractor employee interfering in his chain of command, and that consideration alone justified the little arm-twisting exercise.

Certainly pressuring the man with his own misdeeds was far more humane than having him fired.

Mac settled into the comfortable first-class seat. There would be a stop in Seattle in just under four hours, and then five more hours to D.C.

He watched April Rosen enter the cabin, her smile warm but subdued as she checked the seat numbers and sat a row ahead of him and across the aisle. He could see fatigue and worry in her eyes in just the brief moment that she’d glanced at him. Ironic, he thought, that she was sharing a cabin with the man who could be considered the cause of her troubles. He felt a fatherly urge to reassure her that it would be all right, and that he would make sure of it.

But there was no practical or safe way to do so, and what he was planning was already risky enough. In fact, Mac thought, there was an even chance that what he planned to do in Washington would end his career.

SEHTTLE, UJHSHINGTON

The idea had seemed all but inspired when she was standing in her office, but now the reality of approaching the elaborate doorway of her senior partner’s Medina district home felt like an act of sacrificial stupidity.

Gracie hesitated, her thoughts racing through the range of options, from turning and leaving quietly to pushing ahead and ringing the doorbell.

He’s already expecting me, she reminded herself. There was no turning back.

Ben Janssen opened the door himself, his big, meaty hand engulfing hers in a not unfriendly handshake as he ushered her into a large den, warm with family portraits and framed snapshots spilling off every surface, the beamed wooden ceiling a counterpoint to the perfectly manicured, lighted lawn beyond.

She thanked him, perhaps too effusively, for agreeing to see her on a Saturday evening and he waved it away.

“Gracie, I’m always available to any of my people, junior or senior. If I can expect you to work at any hour, I can expect myself to be at the helm when you need me.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you heard anything from Bernie Ashad?”

“No, sir. After our conversation, of course, I’ve attempted no contact, but there has been nothing from his end.”

“There will be, unless he returns my call first, which he won’t do because I’m nowhere near as cute as you.”

“Yes, sir.”

He leaned forward slightly, his incredibly bushy eyebrows lowering over his deep-set eyes, his slightly craggy, squarish face showing the rigors of more than forty years of practice.

Janssen, she knew, had passed his sixty-fourth birthday, but was considered as healthy as a horse.

“Gracie, I’m a very direct man. Always have been. Today’s politically correct world doesn’t like my style much, and I’m sure I occasionally get too close to the line.”

“Sir?”

“Have I, or am I making you uncomfortable with my references to Ashad’s true intentions and the sexual aura surrounding anything he does with a woman?”

“No, sir. I understand what you’re saying.”

He nodded slowly, studying her face. “Okay. You tell me if I go too far. Not only do I never want to field a sexual harassment suit, I genuinely don’t want you to feel harassed.”

“I don’t, sir.”

“All right. You wanted to see me.”

“First, I apologize again for …”

He was already waving away her words. “Not necessary. We understand each other.”

She licked her lips and nodded slowly. “Very well.”

“If that’s why you came over, then we’re done.”

“No, sir. There are new developments in the Rosen case, and I need to … ask your advice, and ask for a personal favor.”

She explained her emergency filings, the loss of the D.C. lawyer, the need to take the fight to the Beltway, and the critical nature of Arlie Rosen’s emotional state.

Ben Janssen sighed and sat back. “Grade, is Rosen a client of the firm?”

“Yes, sir. Absolutely!”

“And, I assume his finances are already being drained?”

She nodded.

“What are we charging for your time?”

“One hundred fifty per hour, sir.” She smiled. “I’ve got a way to go to get to your level of eight hundred an hour.”

“But,” he continued, “I get the distinct impression that these people are very close to you personally. Right?”

She nodded.

“How close?”

“I … never really had a family life, for numerous reasons.

Arlie and Rachel Rosen have been my surrogate parents.” She felt the last word catch in her throat and forced the emotion back.

“Very well. Let’s do this. I’m releasing them to you individually, as your individual clients. If you need to have the firm’s name for purposes of clout, then we can do that, but otherwise, it seems to me

you’re arguing on the merits and the firm will just cost these folks a huge amount.”

“Thank you!”

“Oh, don’t thank me yet. You’ve had your attention diverted in a way I can’t institutionally allow in an associate. You have to decide that law practice, Jor the firm, comes first. But I’ll allow a little adjustment time to get past this one and make your decision.”

“My … decision?”

“I’m going to kick you out on personal leave for three weeks.

I’ll tell Dick Walsh. You don’t need to call him. At the end of that time, you come to me at the office and tell me one of two things. You resign, or you’re back to work, body and soul, with no more wild diversions.”

“Okay.”

“I know you’re sitting there thinking, How can he call my surrogate parents diversions’? But there were better, more professional ways to handle this.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Gracie, keep this clearly in mind. We’re paying you a huge starting salary, and it is not for charity. We expect you to earn every penny of it.”

“Am I … on probation, Mr. Janssen?”

He smiled and looked at the Persian carpet for a second before looking back at her and nodding. “At the very least. I can’t give you any other answer. You’ve blundered badly on two counts: diverting your attention from the firm and messing with a client for personal reasons—Ashad, I mean. But this will give you a second chance as well as the opportunity to clear your friends’