Flesh and Bones: A Jake Lassiter Novel

by Paul Levine

  Below them, in the darkness, was the primordial slough. Kingston hoped for a soft, level spot, not a strand of mahogany or live oak trees. It wasn't the ideal terrain for ditching but better than the side of a mountain.

  Dozier was hurriedly thumbing through the flight manual. "Nothing here. Nothing for loss of all hydraulics."

  "It's not supposed to happen," Kingston said softly.

  # # #

  He said his name was Howard Laubach. Rita Zaslavskaya said she was glad to meet him, but she wasn't glad at all. She had heard the explosion and felt the plane shudder. Now, the right wing kept dipping and the nose of the plane was sliding back and forth. She'd asked a flight attendant what happened, but the woman hurried past her and headed toward the cockpit, the color drained from her face.

  "It could have been anything," Howard Laubach said, a hopeful note in his voice. "A flock of birds could have been sucked into the engine. Heck, that's brought down planes before. But the captain seems like he has this one under control."

  It didn't seem under control to Rita. It seemed as if the plane would veer to one side, then overcorrect and swerve to the other side like a wobbly drunk attempting to walk a straight line. Other passengers were chattering nervously or praying or simply grasping their armrests with bloodless hands. Rita felt queasy, as if she'd eaten piroshki made with spoiled meat, and the look on the flight attendant's face had frightened her. Something was very wrong.

  She turned to her seatmate. "You're pretty calm for someone who brings his own oxygen aboard." She was annoyed that the man could be so oblivious to the situation.

  "It isn't oxygen," Laubach said, testily. "I'm just prepared. If there's a fire, you'd wish you were, too." He clutched his smoke hood, as if she might steal it.

  "What's that noise?" Rita asked, jerking around in her seat.

  "Landing gear," Laubach said. "He's setting her down."

  "Where? Here?" She leaned past him and peered out into the blackness. All she could see was the startled face of an insane woman. It took her a moment to figure out that she was staring into her own reflection.

  Suddenly, a horn blared on the Ground Proximity Warning System. The nose angled up again, and both pilot and copilot pushed forward on the yoke. Tony Kingston already had given the tower his count: 288 souls on board. It helped the authorities when it was time to count bodies.

  "Six-four-zero, please advise," Miami Control said through the headset.

  "We're about to put the world's largest tricycle down in the swamp," Kingston said.

  "Roger that, six-four-zero. We've got you on radar and we're dispatching rescue vehicles."

  "Tony, I can't keep the nose down," Ryder said. "I'm having a real nose-up moment here." His voice was cracking.

  "More power, Larry."

  Dozier pulled both throttles back. "C'mon baby," he coaxed her. "Level, level, level."

  The aircraft picked up speed and the nose came down.

  "You're gonna have to back off some more," Kingston said. "We're going too fast."

  "Without flaps or slats, I can't slow it down without stalling," Dozier said, sounding desperate.

  It's not hopeless, Kingston told himself, but he knew the odds were against them. At over two hundred knots, they'd likely break up on impact.

  Dozier eased up on both throttles.

  Too much.

  A puff of smoke, a sputter, a cough.

  "Oh, shit!" Ryder shouted. "Number one quit."

  They were flying on one engine. Dozier immediately increased the power, but it was too late. The number three engine smoked, choked, and stalled. They coasted in total silence, the huge aircraft a glider.

  "Okay, fellows," Tony Kingston said. "We're taking her in."

  For several seconds there was nothing but the sweet, sad rush of the slipstream past the windshield. Then the left wing dipped, and the plane rolled hard, the wings virtually perpendicular to the ground. Loose papers flew across the cockpit. Without the lift from the wings, they had only a few seconds before they would plunge nose down into the ground.

  Tony Kingston fought the yoke, his cramped arms futilely trying to right the plane. He heard screams from the cabin, just as in his nightmares. Next to him, his copilot whispered a prayer.

  Kingston wanted to draw out the last moments, to arrange his thoughts, pull up memories from the recesses of his mind. But there was no time. He saw her then, her face flashing by, beautiful but heartbroken, and for the briefest moment, he felt a stabbing pain, knowing of her anguish when she heard the news. He said it then, knowing the cockpit voice recorder would pick it up, and she would hear him or at least read the words. He told her he loved her.

  A few jumbled images raced through his senses: his father, long buried; a cold Minnesota lake where he swam as a child with his sister; and then the black-and-white grainy videotape of the two men walking along the jetty in Kuwait just before the bomb hit.

  What did they say to each other? Why didn't they run?

  "Impact" and all of Paul Levine's novels are available on Amazon Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

  CHAPTER 1

  ON THE NIGHT BEFORE HER INTERVIEW at the Supreme Court of the United States, Lisa Fremont did not know if she could go through with it. She wanted the job all right-what newly minted lawyer wouldn't?-but then, the thought of corrupting the position, of using it to repay an old debt, was antithetical to everything she thought she had become.

  But have I really changed? Am I Lisa Fremont, magna cum laude from Stanford Law or Angel from the Tiki Club in the Tenderloin?

  Until today, she thought she could handle it. But that was before she visited the Court to get the feel of the place. What she felt was reverence, a sense of awe, even piety.

  I got goose bumps for God's sake! How do I explain to someone like Max that marble statues and musty law books and the weight of history give me goose bumps? He only gets excited when the Dow Jones jumps.

  Using his own key, Max Wanaker had breezed into her apartment just after 6 P.M. He kissed her hello, poured himself a Scotch, and made her a Gibson, heavy on the vodka, light on the vermouth. Then he loosened his tie and tossed his Armani suit coat over a chair. He kicked off his black Italian loafers, polished to a high gloss.

  Lisa wore a cropped stretch lace camisole and high-cut briefs, both white with satin trim, under a soft pink chenille bathrobe that made her golden red hair glow a buttery copper under the track lighting. She had put on the robe when Max turned the air-conditioning down to sixty-five. It didn't matter if it was her apartment or his hotel suite, everything was always done to Max's specifications. Now, in early autumn in Washington, D.C., there was a manmade cold front settling into the living room.

  In more ways than one.

  They hadn't gone out to dinner. Too risky. Not because Max's wife, Jill, might discover them. Jill was blissfully alone in Miami, well aware of Max's long-term relationship with Lisa.

  No, the risk was bigger now. There could be no connection-no nexus, to use the legal term-between Atlantica Airlines and her. If there were, and it became known, she'd be no use to Max, and his big plans would be blown.

  If I can go through with it at all.

  For a moment she wondered what Tony would have done, but that was easy. Tony Kingston was the Eagle Scout, the Top Gun navy pilot, a yes ma'am, no ma'am, guy who didn't jaywalk, litter, or cheat on his taxes. But Tony was gone, and now the plaintiffs' lawyers said he'd been negligent. Lying bastards! Vultures picking at the flesh of the dead. A part of her wanted to help Max tank the case just to shut them up, but she realized that was irrational, and hadn't she spent all these years locking her brain into a lawyer's sense of logic and reason?

  After dinner, she told Max she didn't think she could do it, and they argued until 2 A.M.

  "An ethical problem?" Max asked incredulously as he paced around her small living room. "Three years of planning, and now you have an eth-i-cal prob-lem." He dragged out the words, as if trying a strange new phrase
in Tagalog or Punjabi.

  "Yes, Max, I realize that's a foreign concept to you."

  He stopped pacing long enough to absorb the insult, then ignored it. "Are you worried about being disbarred?"

  "It would be one of the shortest legal careers in history," she said, ruefully. "I could go to jail, too."

  "So that's it! You are afraid." He laughed, the told-you-so, condescending chuckle he used when the joke was on someone else. "I remember a time when you could walk, buck naked, into a party of drunken investment bankers and show no fear. You could control every man in the place with your wits and your poise, and now you're afraid of what, being subpoenaed by some two-bit G-twelve assistant attorney general who drives a Chevy?"

  Vintage Max, measuring a man by his net worth.

  "If he drove a Porsche," she said, "would he be more worthy of respect?"

  Max glared at her, a black-eyed scowl that could terrorize a corporate VP or send a secretary home in tears. In the old days, Lisa was intimidated by him, too. Not anymore.

  "What are you going to do, Max, fire me? Too late. I've got tenure. I know where the skeletons are buried."

  "Not all of them," he said with a coldness that sent a shiver up her spine.

  They stood looking at each other, Max Wanaker and Lisa Fremont, former lovers and current coconspirators. He was frowning, his gray mustache turning downward. He was handsome and dark-complexioned with salt-and-pepper hair swept back and moussed. A jogger and tennis player in his younger days, Max was starting to put on a little weight around the middle. Too many business dinners, too much booze.

  She remembered the way he looked when they first met, ten years ago. Why did it seem like another lifetime? He had been thirty-nine, and she was seventeen.

  Jesus, it was another lifetime.

  She knew how much she had changed. But what was different about Max? Not . just his graying hair. In those days-before Atlantica-he was on his way up. Big dreams, boundless energy and optimism. He'd scratched and clawed until the dreams came true. So why was he so unhappy now? There was the crash of Flight 640 three years ago and the lawsuit, of course, but she knew there was more, and lately, Max wasn't talking.

  She poured him another Scotch, hoping to mellow him out. "I went to the Court today, just to look around. Jesus, Max, you walk through these giant bronze doors with scenes of ancient Greece and Rome molded into them. Then there are marble statues and busts everywhere. Lady Justice, Moses, Confucius …"

  "Confucius?" he said, puzzled.

  "I went into the library. All hand-carved wood, giant arches, a quiet, peaceful place. It's almost holy, like a church or a cathedral."

  "Exactly!" he agreed, smiling now. "That's what they want you to think. Like all those churches you hauled me to in Italy. Why do you think they built them like that? For the glory of God. Hell, no! They did it to scare the shit out of the peasants. You walk into a church, what's the first thing you do? You lower your voice, you whisper. Same thing in your fancy Court, right? The judges are the priests- they even dress like priests-and everyone else is a peasant. They want to scare you into thinking you're on hallowed ground, that they're doing sacred work. Hypocrites! They don't want you to know what they're doing under the robes."

  Lisa walked to the window, looking past her balcony into Dumbarton Oaks Park and the creek beyond. Max had chosen the apartment, but unlike the old days, he wasn't paying for it. At least not on the books. Two years ago, when she was still in law school, he began erasing the paper trail-the canceled checks, airline passes, credit card receipts-that would link her to him. It was his idea that maybe one day she'd be able to help him in a way no one could know about. It sounded crazy at first, just as crazy as taking a money-losing air-freight forwarder with three aging jet props and turning it into Atlantica Airlines, poster child of deregulation and booming international air carrier … until the disastrous crash of Flight 640.

  "You're very persuasive, Max," she said, at last. "You should have been a lawyer."

  Max laughed. "No way, baby! That's why I spent a hundred grand on you."

  "I don't think I'll get the job," she said, softly. "I think Justice Truitt will look at me and see I don't belong there."

  Or is that what I want? The easy way out, sparing me the hassle of refusing to do Max's dirty work.

  "That's where you're wrong. You belong anywhere you want to be. You're the most powerful woman I've ever known."

  "I learned from you," she said.

  "No! You had the power as a seventeen-year-old but didn't know it. All I did was mark the trail for you. You climbed it all by yourself." He studied her for a moment, and she averted her eyes, her shyness a childhood trait. He smiled. "Anyway, don't worry. The judge will take one look at you and want to adopt you."

  "Max, he's your age."

  "Even better … he'11 want to screw you." He laughed again, his mood softening, maybe pleased she was confiding her fears. She so seldom showed any insecurity.

  "Stop worrying," he said. "You're going to get the job. You're going to be the sexiest smartest law clerk in the history of the Supreme Court."

  "Maybe," she said.

  "You're being interviewed by a man, and deep inside, we're all alike."

  No, Max, you're not. You and Tony were not alike. And I doubt you and Sam Truitt share much in common despite the same configuration of x and y chromosomes.

  She'd never told Max that she'd become Tony Kingston's lover after their break-up her first year in law school. As far as Max knew, Tony was just the navy pilot she'd introduced him to, the hometown hero she said would be a great addition to the Atlantica fleet. Well, she was right, wasn't she?

  "It's different on the Supreme Court," Lisa said. "You know what they taught us first year in law school?"

  "Probably how to overcharge your clients."

  "Jus est ars boni et aequi. Law is the art of the good and the just."

  "And the meek shall inherit the earth," Max responded in the sarcastic tone she knew so well. He walked to the window and wrapped his arms around her from behind. "If the law worked so damn well, O.J. would have sucked gas, Klaus von Bulow would have been stuck full of needles, and"-he paused a moment, as if not sure whether to continue-"and your father would have been hung by his testicles."

  She turned around in his arms to face him. "And the victims of Flight six-forty would have hit Atlantica for several hundred million in verdicts," she added.

  "Sort of proves my point, doesn't it?"

  It did, but his cynicism irritated her. If Max were right, then why had she just spent three years studying law and another year clerking for a federal judge? Just to be another manipulator of the system? But even if he were wrong, how could she turn him down? Max had never denied her anything. He had supported her, nurtured her, helped her grow into an adult. In return, she had been his lover for most of the past decade. He'd been understanding when she left him during law school and comforting when she'd come back after Tony's death. And now, for the first time, he wanted something more, something that collided head-on with everything she had learned the past four years.

  "If justice is such a rare commodity," she said, "maybe I should work for it. Maybe I should help put criminals in jail or defend the wrongfully accused."

  "You're too smart for that. That's sucker talk. I don't see you in the Justice Department or in some public defender's office with a metal desk and stale coffee."

  "I remember the first time you told me how smart I was," she said. "It was endearing then. Now, it sounds like an insult."

  "There's smart," he said, "like book learning, which can open some doors but otherwise doesn't mean shit, and then there's streetsmart, which you can't buy with a degree. You got both, which knocks my socks off."

  No one had ever expressed admiration for her intelligence before Max came along. Not her teachers, not her mother, not her father. Especially not her father, whose praise was limited to her physical assets.

  Max had told her sh
e could be anything she wanted, and she believed him. He gave her confidence and a chance at a new life. Now that she had that life, she didn't want to risk losing it.

  "Do you remember when you told me I was smarter than you?" she asked.

  "Sure. It was the night we met."

  # # #

  Max Wanaker walked into the Tiki Club and sat down on a bar stool in front of the stage. It had a rusty brass go-go pole, chains hanging from the ceiling, a scratchy sound system, and a number of missing bulbs in the multicolored lighting system. In the back was a darkened lap-dancing lounge with black satin couches. The place smelled like a mixture of stale beer and cheap perfume, moist mildew and industrial strength cleaner.

  A connoisseur of strip joints, Max preferred the sophisticated atmosphere of Ten's in Manhattan, where fifty-five exotic dancers stroll onto the stage in full-length sequined gowns, strobe lights blasting, smoke machine billowing. Tonight, he was slumming. Mainly because he had been bored, he told the limo driver to stop when he saw the flashing neon sign, LIVE GIRLS.

  As opposed to what? DEAD GIRLS?

  The sign, as effective as the Sirens' songs that lured sailors onto the rocks, brought Max into the club. Now he approached the small stage, scanning the room. The strippers all looked as if they'd been ridden hard-the meaty redhead slouching on stage, out of step with Aerosmith, already down to her ratty gold panties, oversize tits barely bouncing, the two in lingerie at the bar, cadging drinks-all of them with big hair, six-inch nails, and siliconed melon breasts. He had one watery Scotch and was ready to leave when Lisa came on the stage to the music of Billy Joel.

  Jesus, she's just a kid.

  She looked like a cheerleader. Small breasts, sleek reddish blonde hair, clear blue eyes, long legs, a full mouth, little makeup other than painted-on whiskers, something he didn't get until he realized she was wearing a tight leopard skin dress with little leopard ears. She seemed embarrassed, and he was enchanted.