April sighed again. “I was hoping the D.C. attorney we hired had been able to fix things.”
“Well, maybe he has. Open it, please, and read it to me.”
April used her index fingernail to neatly rip through the top edge of the envelope, pulling the single sheet of pedestrian paper from within. The blue logo of the FAA was imprinted on the sheet along with the text.
“Oh, God, Gracie! Oh, God!”
“What?”
“It’s a ‘Notice of Emergency Revocation.’”
“Oh, no!”
“Yes. Dammit, Gracie, this will kill Dad.”
“You’re sure it says ‘revocation’?”
“I’m sure. They’re accusing him of… wait… this is ridiculous… flying while intoxicated, reckless operation of an aircraft, and violation of visual flight rules. What do we do?”
“You have a fax machine there, don’t you?”
“Yes. Fax it to you?”
“And to the lawyer in D.C.” Gracie relayed both numbers.
“What do I tell Dad?”
She could hear Gracie sigh on the other end, and the lack of a rapid comeback accelerated her fears. “April, you realize this also grounds him at United?”
“Yes.”
“So… I don’t know what to tell you, except that now the fight begins.”
“Gracie, can I get you on a speakerphone to help me tell him?”
“Better that we pull the lawyer in on this as well. His name is Ted Greene. Give me a few minutes and I’ll call you back to arrange it. Keep that damn thing hidden from your dad until then.”
“I’ll try. I was going back to Vancouver this afternoon, but now…”
“He’s going to need you there, April, for a bit at least. This is going to be a heavy blow.”
“I know.”
“Stay put. I’ll call you back.”
“He’s never had an FAA violation in his whole career. Did you know that?”
“April, it’s going to be okay.”
The letter was becoming opaque through her tears as she nodded, then remembered to speak. “Okay.”
The phone rang within ten minutes with Gracie on the other end.
“Mr. Greene? Are you there?”
“Yes,” a male voice announced in the electronic distance of his Washington office.
“All right. April? We’re on your cell phone with the speakerphone feature, right?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll hold while you go get the captain.”
April moved to her parents’ bedroom feeling like an executioner. Rachel Rosen was already up and greeted her daughter from the alcove of their bathroom, but Arlie was still lying in bed.
“Dad?”
He looked grim, she noticed.
“Hi, honey.”
“I…”
“The postal service never comes at this hour, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Which means it was a registered letter, which means it’s from the FAA, which means it’s very bad news.”
April looked at the letter in her hands as she slid onto the side of the bed and nodded. “I’ve got Gracie and our aviation lawyer, a Mr. Greene, on the phone. They want to talk to you.”
“Let me see the letter,” Arlie said quietly as he lifted it from her hands and opened it, scanning the text before handing it back and nodding to the phone. His face was ashen, but his voice was steady.
“Okay, April. Put them on.”
Gracie O’Brien ended the conference call between Ted Greene and the Rosens and immediately redialed Greene’s Washington office.
“I need a straight assessment, Mr. Greene.”
There was a long sigh from D.C. “Well, to be blunt, we’ve got a hell of a mess here.”
Gracie felt her heart sink. On the conference call, Greene had said all the right and cautious things a good lawyer should say to a new client at the start of an unknown legal journey, but she’d expected a slightly more optimistic lawyer-to-lawyer statement.
“They’re gunning for him, Gracie. I mean, FAA tends to get that way, as we both know, when it gets to enforcement actions. But I couldn’t get even the most cursory cooperation in Captain Rosen’s case. It’s as if they’ve made an agency decision to go for broke and destroy him.”
“What can we do? I mean… Okay, that’s a dumb question for co-counsel to ask.”
“No, not really. The nexus of their righteous indignation is the theory that Captain Rosen simply flew the aircraft into the water, negligently. Everything else stems from that. But the drinking charge is very serious, and could be disastrous. Now, if the hospital did a blood test when Rosen was admitted, a zero blood-alcohol result would help.”
“You need me to call Anchorage?”
“One of my staff is already on it. Keep your fingers crossed.”
“I will. He wasn’t drinking.”
“The charge that he violated visual flight rules is hogwash, but it may be the most dangerous one of all, since they can create havoc by saying that he flew too far into instrument conditions without a clearance. I listened carefully to the recording of that hospital interview, and Captain Rosen, unfortunately, left the door open a crack for them with the way he described the conditions.”
“But, he tried to turn around.”
“Not soon enough. They’ll say he spent too much time on the radio calling for an instrument clearance.”
Gracie was tapping a pencil against her blotter in a frantic beat. “Oh, damn, damn, damn. You say the reckless charge is the worst?”
“Their word and interpretation against his.”
“But what about the propeller?”
“That, unfortunately, is what I’m leading up to. We need to recover enough of that wreckage to at least show the prop blade is missing. That’s our best defense. Of course, they’ll claim it came off on impact with the water, but I seriously doubt that will sway a hearing examiner. We need that wreckage, regardless of what it costs to salvage it.”
She rubbed her head and sighed. “I’ll get to work on it.”
“Gracie, I know you’re a family friend. How long does Captain Rosen have till retirement? Is early retirement an option?”
“Not only no, but hell no. He’s only forty-nine. He’ll fight to his last penny, and even when they retire him someday, he’ll be flying privately. I fully expect to see him flying into his nineties.”
“First we have to get his license back.”
“And there is, I assume, no chance of getting this so-called emergency revocation reversed quickly?”
“None whatsoever.”
Answering the home phone on the first ring was an unconscious habit, and April pulled the receiver to her ear unprepared for the slightly familiar male voice on the other end.
“Mrs. Rosen?”
“Ms. Rosen. Who is this?”
“Walter Harrison of the FAA. I have a message for Captain Rosen.”
“You need to talk to his team of lawyers, Mr. Harrison. You won’t get away with this outrage, by the way. I’d plan an early retirement if I were you.”
There was a malevolent chuckle on the other end. “In denial, are we, Ms. Rosen? Well, you want to believe that dear old dad couldn’t be drinking, and I understand your misguided loyalty. But I’ve found the proof, no pun intended.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He visited a liquor store in Anchorage just before the accident, which means the charges are valid and his days of imperiling passengers are over. Undoubtedly the empty bottles will be in the wreckage. A fifth of bourbon, two bottles of vodka — the alcoholic’s friend — a bottle of Jamaican rum, and a very fine cognac. All that booze was purchased an hour before departure from Lake Spenard, and he signed the credit card receipt himself.”