Skyhook

by John J. Nance

  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.

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  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. “Gracie, 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, for 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’ problems, or”—he had an index finger in the air—“or send them to another practitioner better suited to that kind of matter. It’s your choice, Gracie. We’d like to keep you, but there will be no more concessions. And, I might add, be very careful how you conduct yourself in this mission through the federal courts. Do not make yourself a liability to us through a tarnished reputation, or there will be no option to return.”

  Piloting her car to Seatac airport to meet April was accomplished by rote. As Gracie parked, she realized she had no conscious memory of the trip, or of much of anything since Janssen waved goodbye and closed his door physically and metaphorically. The concept of a professional purgatory filled her head, defining itself by the way she felt, which was somewhere between devastated and encouraged. She had been saved and damned in the same moment, her reputation with the managing partner a mélange of disappointment and respect, all of it leading to her professional demise if she mishandled the next three weeks.

  For a while she thought seriously of quitting. It would be a simple matter to draft a brief, eloquent letter resigning from the firm and delivering it or sending it by FedEx. It would mean selling her boat and probably her car. But she could retreat without ever having to face them again. The concept, though, of what life might be like beyond Janssen and Pruzan was worse than fuzzy and indistinct. It loomed as dark and purposeless as Joseph Conrad’s vision of a sailor’s wrecked future in Lord Jim, a book that had always haunted her. She felt like Jim, the failed deck officer who had run from a sinking ship full of people at the moment his courage was tested.

  Running, however, was not an option for her. That was cowardice and a void. Arlie Rosen, after all, was depending on her now more than ever, and she owed him and Rachel so very much.

  Gracie stopped at the Alaska Airlines ticket counter and begged a gate pass from a sympathetic agent. She moved in a fog through the screening lines and out to the gate, sitting in a corner of the boarding lounge to wait for the inbound flight and watching passively as the multidimensional cross section of humanity ebbed and flowed past her. The torrent of people carried the usual stream of human emotions: the smiles at happy reunions, the tears at parting, the stoic, the dramatic, and the occasional passive face, all fascinating to her on any typical day.

  But today the cavalcade failed to penetrate the black hole of doubt and apprehension that had become a v
ortex in her soul, a void threatening to swallow not only her sense of humor, but her sense of self.

  When April emerged from the jetway, Gracie met her with a forced smile and what she thought was her usual energy. April filled her in on the meeting with Ben, Cole, and Gracie reciprocated with a tale of the trip to the judge’s house and the advice he’d given her.

  “Washington, D.C.?” April asked in true surprise, as they reached Gracie’s Corvette in the parking structure.

  “Yes. Both of us need to be there, and we should leave in the morning. I’ve already booked a flight. We want to be in position at first light Monday.”

  “So, how does my presence help?”

  Gracie felt the answer stop in her throat, and April noticed. She reached out and touched Gracie’s shoulder as she closed the Corvette’s tiny trunk.

  “Gracie?”

  “Yes?” Gracie responded, accelerating the intensity of her smile.

  “You’re not fooling me, you know.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Something else has happened that’s really affecting you, and you’re not telling me. Is it Dad’s resistance?”

  “Maybe. In part,” Gracie said.

  “What else?”

  “Let’s … get back to my floating palace and we’ll talk. I figured you could stay the night in my guest cabin.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine, but I want answers.”

  Gracie took a deep breath, her eyes shifting to the concrete floor of the garage, the dam of emotion threatening to break. But once more she pulled back and smiled at April.

  “Not now, okay?”

  April nodded slowly as she watched Gracie’s eyes. “Okay.”

  The short trip to Ballard and Shilshole Marina was interrupted by a brief grocery stop, but within an hour the two women had settled into the main parlor of the O’Brien yacht. Armed with fresh coffee and renewed control, Gracie related the previous hours of setbacks, trying to keep it matter of fact and professional and positive, chuckling in all the right places and making light of her own concerns. Arlie’s worried daughter, Gracie figured, needed more reassurance than she did. But to her surprise, April stood without warning and pointed up the narrow stairway to Gracie’s bridge.

  “Come up here a minute with me, okay?”

  “Sorry?”

  “To the wheelhouse.”

  “I call it a bridge.”

  “Whatever.” April was already up the steps and sitting on the side couch that enabled guests to sit and watch the “captain” steer the yacht when under way.

  “Sit,” April commanded when Gracie had joined her, standing uncomfortably by the command chair.

  “Here?” Gracie asked, pointing to the command position.

  “Yes, Captain Kirk. Sit, please.”

  “All right. I’m sitting. Now what?”

  “Look out there, toward the bow. Tell me what you see.”

  “What?”

  “Out there, Gracie. What crosses your mind.”

  Gracie studied the horizon, testing the various descriptive phrases she might use, none of them triggering an appropriate response.

  “April, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what you see. You see the impossible incarnate, Gracie. There was no way a twenty-six-year-old newly minted female lawyer could possibly arrange financing for a yacht this big, let alone live on it, but you did. There was no way you could get that job with Janssen and Pruzan, but you did. There was no way you could get past the blows you’d had as a little girl from a disastrous family background and become a well-balanced, sophisticated, smart, and dedicated adult, who could find a way to make it into and through law school, but you did.”

  “April—”

  “No! Now listen to me carefully. You are vastly more capable than you seem to realize or give yourself credit for, and while a little self-doubt is always healthy, I’ve got a news flash. You’re a fallible human being and you are not going to get perfect anytime soon.”

  “I know that.”

  “No, you don’t! You’re acting like you should have seen everything coming. That fool in D.C. who just dumped us, your senior partner’s response, the billionaire client who already sucked in two women in the firm and is obviously very good at it, are all things you couldn’t have foreseen. You’ve done more in the previous forty-eight hours than ninety percent of the lawyers in America could have or would have done, but you’re in uncharted waters, so you’re kind of innovating as you go along, and that means some moves are going to be wrong.”

  “I’m just worried, okay? Your dad’s future is at stake here.”

  “And yours isn’t?”

  Gracie looked up, thoroughly startled. A long silence passed between them as she met April’s eyes, at a loss for words.

  “You’ve pulled out all the stops for him, Gracie.”

  “Well … of course. He needed good legal representation immediately.”

  “No, Ms. Gracie, he needed you! And he needs us, along with our respective expertise and support.”

  “We’ve got to get this fixed,” Gracie replied. “I’d never forgive myself if—”

  “Gracie, look at me. You know, don’t you, that I’m more than a little aware how much Dad—and Mom—mean to you?”

  Gracie nodded and tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “Sometimes,” April continued, her voice softening, “sometimes I think you get a bit embarrassed by, that, but we’re not just friends, Gracie. We’re sisters in so many ways. They’re your family, too. And I know you’re in an impossible position, trying to play the probative lawyer keeping your professional distance, when you’re really representing your family. And I know you’re as frightened for him as I am.”

  Gracie sighed again, her hands clasped, her head down as she listened.

  “Here’s the point. Don’t playact the senior lawyer with me. Save that for clients who aren’t your family. I know you too well. I have faith that it’s all going to work out, but you’re scared to death for Dad, for your job, your reputation, and your own very human reactions. Right?”

  Slowly Gracie nodded and looked up at her, her voice uncharacteristically quiet and metered. “I’m pretty frightened, April,” she said, as a single tear began its journey down her cheek, tentatively at first, gathering speed until it fell away from her face and landed on the polished wood-grain surface of the instrument panel.

  “I know you’re scared,” April replied. “I could tell the moment I walked out of that jetway that something had gone very wrong today and shaken you. And you are entitled to get shaken once in a while. So admit it to both of us, okay? Don’t just give me a clinical analysis and pretend you don’t need a good cry.”

  April leaned over and drew Gracie to her, hugging her tightly as the dam broke at last.

  FORTY THREE

  MONDAY MORNING, DAY 8 SEQUIM, WASHINGTON

  Arlie sat in disgust for a few seconds before deciding to search under the hood of his car for the genesis of its refusal to start. He pulled the appropriate T-handle and got out, lifting the hood, eyes falling instantly on something sitting on one side of the engine that he’d never noticed before. It was a cylindrical metallic object roughly ten inches long, and apparently part of the engine assembly. But he couldn’t recall its function, or whether it could be blocking the car’s starter. He reached for the object, his hand touching the metallic surface and triggering a hidden electrical circuit. The psychological impact of a small firecracker exploding from beneath the device caused him to jump back, adrenaline following the shock, a tiny burst of smoke wafting from the object and marking the reality that the harmless device had been wired to wait for his touch.

  A small rod had been thrust out of the front carrying a cloth-like appendage with writing, and Arlie squinted to read the message: Bang, it said. You’ve been warned. Next time you’ll be dead.

  Arlie yanked the device from the engine and threw it angrily as far int
o the adjacent field as he could, then slammed the hood closed and walked quickly back to the house, shaking slightly with a confusing mix of anger and apprehension.

  Rachel was standing at the center island of the kitchen when he threw open the door. She turned from the task of opening a small package and looked at him, startled at his wild-eyed appearance. “Honey? Back so soon?” she asked, continuing to remove brown wrapping paper from what appeared to be a small cardboard box.

  “What’s that?” Arlie asked, leveling a finger at the package, aware that his beautiful wife was inches away and pulling open the top.

  “Don’t know,” Rachel replied. “Maybe a gift. It was on our doorstep.”

  “NO!” he lunged at the box as a loud crack echoed through the house.

  Rachel jumped back as Arlie grabbed the box seconds too late. A similar puff of burned gunpowder assaulted his nose as he recovered his balance and turned around, his eyes meeting Rachel’s, his memory recalling the horrid decapitation of one of the infamous Unabomber’s victims.

  “What on earth?” she managed, pushing herself back along the counter.

  Arlie looked down at the box, disgusted at the small flag that had emerged: It’s Monday morning. Know where your daughter is?

  Rachel read the words as well.

  “Is this some sort of stupid joke?” she asked. “If so, it isn’t funny.”

  He was shaking his head in spite of himself. “No. No joke. It’s a threat.”

  “From whom? About what?”

  He laid the box on the counter and came to her, holding her tight, unable to stem the cascade of tears from his eyes.

  “Arlie? What’s going on?” she asked, her voice small and strained.

  “Baby, get dressed and pack a bag. We’ve got to leave right now. I’ll explain after we’re on the road.”