“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.
FORTY TWO
SATURDAY EVENING, DAY 6 ANCHORAGE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, ALASKA
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.