by Neil Turner
My eyes snap forward when the kid pulls his seat belt and shoulder strap snug, fires up the engine, and glances over his shoulder. “Everyone strapped in back there?”
“You’re our pilot?” I blurt as the engine roars to life.
“He’s older than he looks,” Max assures me while Tony Junior nods and smiles at me.
Older than he looks, huh? So, he’s what? Sixteen? Megan Walton could have been his mother!
After the engine settles into a steady purr, I try to console myself with the reassuring knowledge that he at least knows where the on switch is.
Junior shoots a cheerful thumbs-up to the ramp hand outside, who promptly disappears beneath the aircraft and emerges dragging the black-and-yellow rubber thingies that kept the plane from rolling away. He walks across the floor to push the hangar doors aside. Then, before I have a chance to leap out of the aircraft, we’re on our way out into the night.
“Next stop, Minneapolis-Saint Paul!” Junior announces happily as we taxi away from safety. “I’d like to thank you for flying with us this evening on Plummer’s Put-Put Airlines.”
Papa pays no attention to our pilot’s patter, Max dutifully chuckles, and I look around for the nearest barf bag. Then we’re clawing our way into the black sky at fifteen or twenty miles per hour and bouncing along as if we’re hitting atmospheric potholes every five or six feet. Or so it seems… I hope to hell we’re going faster than that.
“Looks like we got away cleanly,” Max says with satisfaction. “Nobody got shot, anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s a relief,” I reply dryly. I’m surrounded on a death flight by comedians. Not exactly how I imagined going out.
Just under five white-knuckle hours later, we’re back on blessed terra firma, rolling past blue taxiway lights until we reach the general aviation apron. An airport pickup truck awaits us. I clamber out of the plane ahead of Max and Papa and resist the urge to kiss the ground. Then I help schlep their bags to the back of the pickup. The smell of approaching snow is in the air as a fuel truck pulls up alongside the Cessna. I hope to hell we’re on our way before the white shit arrives.
After a quick hug and goodbye, Papa climbs into the front cab of the pickup with Max. Tony Junior supervises the refueling while I watch the rear lights of the vehicle carrying Papa and Max disappear toward the main terminal building in the distance. I say a silent prayer for their safekeeping. Then I add a quick one for my own safety. When I turn back to our aircraft, I find young Tony grinning at me.
“Ready to do it again?” he asks. The little shit knows exactly what I’m thinking.
I nod, wondering if Max and Papa are in any greater jeopardy than I am. At least they’ll be flying in a great big airplane with a grown-up at the controls.
Chapter Fifteen
The shakes from last night’s aerial adventure to Minneapolis are subsiding by the time Penelope and I depart for our weekly partner luncheon at The Sandwich Emporium. We’re still shoehorned into our strip-mall offices while we await completion of the future law offices of Brooks and Valenti on this, day ninety-three of what our general contractor had confidently assured us would be a ninety-day project. As I recall, he’d scoffed at the possibility that they’d take the whole ninety days to get the work done. I stopped by our future digs on the way in this morning. To my admittedly unpracticed eye, things seem to be maybe fifty percent along.
Maiko Campbell looks up when the tinkle of the door chime announces our arrival. She breaks into one of those smiles that casts light into black holes. “Tony-san! Penelope!”
“That’s us,” Penelope replies with an answering smile. The combined wattage of these two smiling is probably as dangerous as looking directly at a solar eclipse.
My eyes immediately travel to the chalkboard and today’s eagerly anticipated daily special creation, then drop back to Maiko, over to Brian Campbell, and back to the chalkboard. “Corned beef on rye?”
“Complain to the wholesalers!” Maiko gripes. “No good sales this morning, Tony-san. Even the corned beef wasn’t such a good deal.”
“This is disappointing,” I mutter dramatically. “Guess I’ll have the corned beef on rye. Mind you,” I add with a sideways glance at Penelope, “we could have gotten that at any old deli counter for half the price.”
Penelope smiles at Maiko. “I happen to like corned beef on rye. I’ll take one…. without the side of whining.”
Maiko winks at her. “Coming right up. Go, sit down. Your usual table is ready.”
We make our way to the back and settle in at our little table, set for two today instead of the trio of place settings Maiko had squeezed in when Pat O’Toole and Ben Larose joined me a couple of weeks ago. I make a show of breathing in the sweet aroma of Brian’s baking bread and licking my lips. “I’m starving.”
“What happened to all the complaining about corned beef?” Penelope asks.
I shrug.
She gives me an indulgent look and shakes her head. “You read my notes?”
The FBI’s interrogation of our R & B Ramp Services clients had shaken us badly, prompting Penelope to dig more deeply into the peculiarities of aviation lawsuits. The result is a detailed briefing paper to guide our planning. We also sent off an indignant pro forma complaint to the FBI about their agents attempting to interrogate our clients without first reading them their Miranda rights. I imagine it’s now under careful review by the shredding department.
I nod in reply to Penelope’s briefing-notes question while tearing the paper away from the tip of the straw sitting at my place setting.
“Don’t!” Penelope warns as I lift the open end of the straw to my lips and blow, shooting the tube of paper across the table. “You’re such a child!” she exclaims with a laugh after she ducks out of the way.
I beam back at her.
She straightens up and dons her serious lawyer face. “Let’s get to work.”
“Do we have to?”
“Yes!” she retorts with mock exasperation. At least I think it’s mock. “I talked to Ben Larose yesterday. I think you’re right about tagging him as an expert witness.”
“Yeah?”
She nods. “For a couple of reasons.”
“Such as?”
“He knows his stuff. I also trust that he’s on the side of the angels.”
I bounce my eyebrows. “That’s us?”
She does the adorable little nose twitch that signals when she’s amused. “Of course. Well, me, anyway.”
I smile back. How is it that this woman doesn’t have a significant other? I’ve never seen her with anyone other than her roommate, Becky Seguin. Oh well. None of my business. Back to the matter at hand. “What did Larose have to say?”
“Based on what I told him about the FBI interview, he agrees that the FBI—and possibly the NTSB—must have concerns about the hundred-hour inspection that should have been completed in August.”
“That was completed in August,” I counter. “Billy showed us the paperwork and invoice.”
She thoughtfully taps a finger on her nose with her chin in her hand. “I know, and yet they’re zeroing in on that. There’s something there.”
Shit. She has to be right. Why else would the FBI be so interested in the topic? “You’re supposed to be showing me the bright side of things, you know,” I remind her.
“It’s not all doom and gloom, partner.”
Maiko bustles over while I sigh in relief. “Corned beef on rye for Miss Brooks,” she announces with a flourish as she places a paper plate in front of Penelope. Then she smiles at me and deposits a second plate under my nose. “And for Tony-san, who does not like a simple sandwich, we have a true daily special! Corned beef on raisin!”
I burst into laughter when I look down to see a slab of corned beef squeezed between two slices of raisin toast.
“You deserve that, Tony,” Penelope laughs. “Well done, Maiko!”
I smile up at Maiko. “I’ll bet it tastes good!”
S
he wrinkles her nose. “If nothing else, perhaps you’ll learn not to complain about the food here.”
“Go ahead,” Penelope urges with a pointed look at my sandwich while Maiko scoots away to collect our beverages.
However this tastes, I will rave about it, I decide as I lift the thing to my mouth and take a healthy bite. I smile around it as I chew. Maiko returns and cocks an eyebrow at me while she slides a pair of iced teas in front of us—we have a strict no-alcohol rule during Brooks and Valenti professional meetings. “This will be a thing,” I announce after swallowing and wiping my chin with a paper napkin. It actually isn’t bad. It isn’t great, either, although wild horses couldn’t drag that admission out of me in my current company.
Maiko tilts her head and nods, as if she’s come to a decision. “We’ll call it the Valenti Vomit.”
Penelope’s face twists into a revolted grimace. “Pee-yew!”
Maiko smiles and walks away.
“Getting back to not-so-gross topics, the FBI zeroed right in on the invoice for that inspection,” Penelope muses between bites.
“Yeah,” I mutter around a mouthful of Valenti Vomit. “Let’s explore that.”
She nods, swallows, and sets her sandwich down on her plate before touching a corner of napkin to her lips. She’s somehow managing to eat her sandwich without smearing grease all over her face. I, on the other hand, am doing a fair imitation of a one-year-old face-painting himself with a slice of birthday cake. How does she do it? I wonder with a guilty look at the pile of grease-soaked napkins that is growing alongside my plate.
“Did you ask Larose what’s included in the hundred-hour inspection?” I ask.
“I did. It’s pretty thorough. A lot of mechanical checks, testing and examining the electrical systems, plus—and I found this interesting—they inspect the airframe for structural integrity. Rust, cracks, and the like.”
“Hmmm,” I murmur while I swallow and wipe my chin. “But didn’t the NTSB seem to be focused on engine failure?”
“I went back and reread the transcripts of all of the NTSB public statements so far, then went through them over the phone with Ben. There is a single mention of a wing-strut failure that they left open.”
“Left open?”
“For further review,” she replies before taking a sip of her iced tea. “They didn’t make a determination of whether or not the strut failed before or after impact.”
“Oh. That sounds ominous.”
“Not necessarily. Ben says it’s entirely possible that the strut may have been subjected to stress in flight that exceeded its ultimate tensile strength.”
“In English,” I request before popping the last bite of corned beef and raisin toast into my mouth.
“In layman’s terms, the plane wasn’t designed to dive at a hundred fifty-plus miles per hour while the pilot fought the controls, causing the plane to twist and turn as it fell. Structural failure is a definite risk under those stresses. Ben can’t imagine that the NTSB will be able to determine what actually happened, and certainly won’t be in any position to make a definitive determination that the accident was the result of in-flight structural failure.”
“Thereby clearing Billy and Rick of responsibility for the crash,” I conclude happily.
“That might be a little too definitive,” she warns. “In Ben’s words, a plane failing under those circumstances is on no one unless the pilot deliberately flew the aircraft beyond its design tolerances.”
“Stunt flying and such?” I ask.
“Exactly.”
“So, what’s the FBI up to?”
“Good question,” she replies with her eyebrows knitted together. “Let’s not forget the mention of Rick’s liver.”
“Yeah,” I mutter while pushing my empty plate aside. “That was a bit of a surprise. That said, you know how anal cops can be when it comes to drugs and booze—unless they’re the ones partaking.”
“True, but it still concerns me.”
“I can’t see how that fits into the crash narrative. Can you?”
Penelope turns her palms up. “All I know is that there’s something in that paperwork that we need to be aware of.”
I hold up a finger, dig my cell phone out of my pocket, and place a call to Billy.
After we exchange greetings, he informs me, “I planned to call you in an hour or two when things quiet down a little.” Then he floors me with a bombshell we definitely weren’t expecting at this point. “Some guy came by after lunch and served us with a lawsuit from Windy City.”
“Jesus, Billy! You should have called right away!”
Penelope’s eyes grow large at my outburst.
“Yeah, well, we’re trying to keep our heads above water here,” he snaps back.
The fact that we’re pissed with one another doesn’t sit well with me. Billy and I have never been at odds before. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken this damned case.
“Penelope’s here,” I tell him. “I’m putting the call on speaker.”
“Hi, Billy,” she says pleasantly—ever the diplomat to soften the harsher edges of her partner.
“Hey, Penelope,” he says. “Sounds like I messed up, huh?”
Her eyes shoot daggers at me. “No worries, Billy. Tony’s one of those Mediterranean hotheads.”
Billy laughs softly.
“What’s going on?” Penelope asks. She drops her head back, looks up at the ceiling, and blows out a long breath after he tells her. “Did you read it?”
“Real quick. We’re busy as hell here this afternoon.”
“And?” I prompt.
“Me and Rick tried to sort through all the legal mumbo jumbo. Best we can figure is that they’re claiming we didn’t complete the hundred-hour inspection in August.”
“But you told us you did,” I counter.
“Because we did,” Billy shoots back.
“Tony’s just thinking out loud,” Penelope says with a poisonous glance my way. “He isn’t questioning what you told us. We’re all a little upset about this.”
She’s right, of course. Before I can put my foot in my mouth again, Penelope asks Billy to fax a copy of the paperwork to her. She and Billy agree that he and Rick will come to our office for a meeting on Monday.
At the end of the workday, I make a one-hour stop at home to turn on some lights, start a load of laundry, and walk around a lot to make the place look occupied. The plan is to keep Papa’s escape a secret for as long as possible. We hope to buy enough time for he and Max to reach their destination before anyone starts looking for them. After tossing the wet towels into the dryer so it will vent plenty of steam outside, I set several timers to turn lights on and off at preset intervals. The whole charade is designed to trick anyone who might be watching into thinking Papa’s in the house. He is, to the best of my knowledge, currently on a train with Max somewhere in Germany or in my cousin’s car in Austria or Italy—hopefully without any of the Ndrangheta or Cosche assholes any the wiser. I’ll feel better when Max lets us know they’ve arrived safely at Papa’s sister’s house. When I finish, I set out for Pat’s house.
“Who pissed in your Corn Flakes?” she asks with a smile after I’ve grumped my way through our initial greetings and the obligatory “How was your day?” query.
The old high school line prompts a grudging grin of my own. “Who the hell thought up that dumbass expression?”
“The world floats on a sea of stupid sayings,” she replies with a nonchalant shrug. She’s got a point.
“Where’s Britts?” I ask.
“Upstairs in the midst of the shower-and-hair ritual.”
I know Brittany has plans tonight and so won’t be joining us for dinner, but she’s been a little cagey about what those plans are. I mention this to Pat and ask, “What’s the mystery?”
“No mystery. Just boyfriend stuff.”
“Argh.”
Pat greets my little outburst with a look of exasperation. “She’ll tell you all about this stu
ff as soon as you stop saying dumb shit like that, Valenti.”
After we perch ourselves on a pair of barstools at the breakfast counter, I explain how Windy City Sky Tours shit in my Corn Flakes today by filing a lawsuit against Billy and Rick. Her sunny disposition evaporates before I conclude, “The only upside is that it took my mind off Michelle’s latest stunt.”
Mention of my ex-wife never sits well with Pat. Is that simply because Michelle is a bitch, or is there something more lurking beneath the surface of my complicated relationship with Pat? Having now admitted to a mutual high school attraction that neither of us had acted on, we’ve danced a little do-si-do square dance around each other for the past several months. It’s something we’re going to have to come to terms with sometime soon. But not today.
“What’s Michelle up to now?” she asks.
“I was served with a court order stating that, as Brittany’s guardian, I’m to ensure that she doesn’t come within a thousand yards of Forty-Seven Liberty Street.”
Pat tilts her head to one side and frowns. “Lots of legal papers flying around today, huh? Actually, I can’t blame her for doing that. It’s a pretty good idea.”
“I suppose. Of course, we’re way ahead of her. Your place is many thousands of yards from Liberty Street.”
Pat smiles. “True.”
“How’s it going with her here?”
“Pretty good. We talked before school this morning about the prospect of her going to live with her mother again. I guess Michelle pitched the idea over the phone last weekend.”
My entire being sags: face, slumping shoulders, plummeting spirits. Even my eyes follow until I’m staring down into my lap.
Pat reaches over to touch my arm. “You’ll be happy to hear that Brittany says she isn’t interested.”
I look up. “Really?”
“Really.”