Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Some shakeout,” Schaeffer said derisively. “What about the black boxes?”

“The NTSB recovered both yesterday. They’ll be on display for the media at eleven this morning, but it’s more a photo op than anything else. The FAA’s air-traffic-control tapes will show if the crew said anything to the tower between the time the plane was cleared for takeoff and, uh, the end. The NTSB’s taken control of the tapes, and they won’t be releasing anything today or tomorrow, but generally you can expect transcripts within a week to ten days. The data from the black boxes could be kept under wraps for months.”

“Other leads?” Schaeffer asked.

“I’m taking a stab at getting a list of the members of the go-team, the people who will do the real nuts-and-bolts investigation. If there’s anybody on the list I know, well—”

“Right,” Schaeffer interrupted. “I don’t want to hold you up. Get out there and stay on this thing like a tick on a dog, and stay in touch with Paul. I don’t want to put any pressure on you, so my only instructions are: Don’t be wrong, and don’t get beat.”

Pace hesitated for an instant, but when the editor flashed him a what-are-you-waiting-for look, he began inching his way through legs and kneecaps, excusing himself all the way to the conference-room door.

When he emerged into the nearly deserted newsroom, Pace realized he could feel adrenaline pumping. Blowing away the competition on a major story was all it took to relegate advancing age and career burnout to the emotional trash pile.

Pace walked quickly to his desk, Schaeffer’s admonition on a tape loop in the very foremost part of his brain: “Don’t be wrong, and don’t get beat.” He trusted himself to get the story right. The killer question, as always, was whether he could consistently beat the other papers to fresh angles every day. Those guys got paid, too.

He called Mitch Gabriel at the NTSB. Gabriel was already at Dulles. His assistant was in a meeting. Pace left a message.

Then he tried the Public Information Office at FAA headquarters. On the first three tries, the number was busy. On the fourth attempt, a secretary answered on the ninth ring, a lapse in efficiency doubtless caused by an unusually heavy call load. Conrad Phillips, the FAA’s public-affairs chief, was on another line, already busy at an hour normally considered too early for the conduct of serious business in the nation’s capital.

“Ask him to call me at the paper as soon as he can, would you?” Pace looked up just as Julian Hughes and Glenn Brennan trudged into the newsroom, both obviously done in after spending the last fourteen hours at Dulles.

Brennan was a black Irishman from South Boston who drank too much, smoked too much, and never could find clothes that fit him quite right or a hairstyle worthy of the name. His lifestyle was betrayed by a slight but growing bulge at his waist and a hint on his face of the jowls he would acquire later in life. Pace teased him that he was the model on which the Irish stereotype was built. Brennan always deferred modestly to Jimmy Breslin.

What Brennan lacked in appearance, he made up for in talent. He worked as a general assignment reporter and utility infielder on the Chronicle’s national desk, catching stories that fell into the cracks between beats and providing vacation relief for the beat reporters. He liked that role because it kept him from getting stale. He was a quick study who could slip into a complicated story and pick it up without missing a nuance. Pace admired Brennan’s professional talents without qualification. The man’s personal habits were something else again.

Julian Hughes was arguably the best-looking woman on the Chronicle staff, but she was cool, almost cold, in her relationships with her fellow journalists. She made it plain from the day she came on board that she didn’t believe in dating at work because it could create conflicts in an atmosphere tense to begin with. The male population in the newsroom had to settle for friendship on her terms or no relationship at all. Some were put off by the ultimatum and opted out of her life, which suited her fine. Pace was one of those who was able to appreciate what Hughes added to the ambience of the newsroom and leave it at that.

Professionally, Hughes was considered one of the paper’s rising stars. She was ten years younger than Pace but already held the number two position on the Senate staff.

Brennan and Hughes saw the overflow crowd in the conference room and chose to talk to Pace instead, pulling chairs up to his desk. Brennan nodded toward the meeting. “I gather that’s a gang-bang on the crash,” he said through a huge yawn.

“That’s one way to put it.” Pace laughed. “How goes the vigil of the passenger list?”

“We were up to forty-nine names when the relief troops showed up this morning,” Brennan replied, sounding like a cheap imitation of John Kennedy. He lit a cigarette, holding it in his teeth with his head tilted back to keep the acrid smoke from curling into his eyes. He dropped the dead match on the carpet. Hughes leaned over, picked it up and deposited it in a wastebasket with a look of disgust. Brennan didn’t notice, any more than he noticed the signs clearly proclaiming the newsroom a smoke-free environment.

Suddenly he sat forward in his chair, a broad grin splitting his face. “When our first edition hit the streets with your stories, it caused a hell of a stir out there, boyo. You should have seen it. The reporters were going absolutely apeshit. Apparently the NTSB found the Cessna, but none of the ConPac people knew about it, and the NTSB wasn’t talking until this morning, I guess until they identified the pilot and notified his family. The guys from the Post were all over the airport people and ConPac about how you happened to get to the mid-field terminal. Nobody admitted to knowing a thing about it. Jill and I were just sitting back loving it. By the by, I’ve got the Cessna pilot’s name here if you want it.”

Without waiting for an answer, Brennan started flipping through his top-bound spiral notebook, his illicit cigarette still clenched between his teeth, the ash growing precariously long. At the last moment, just before gravity would have taken it, Brennan cupped his hand under the ash, extracted what was left of the cigarette from his mouth with his thumb and forefinger, and dumped the whole mess into his nearly empty Styrofoam coffee cup. There was a brief but audible hiss. Pace could imagine what the muddy mixture of institutional coffee, powdered creamer, ash, and dead cigarette must look like, but he didn’t dwell on it.

Brennan found the notes he was looking for. “Howard Kisparich, that was the Cessna pilot’s name,” he said. “Virginia lawyer from Vienna. The plane was out of Manassas, but nobody knows what it was doing at Dulles. He was alone.”

Brennan smiled. “Among the passenger names released so far is the honorable representative from Orange County, California, Henry W. Whitlock, defender of truth, justice, and John Birchers everywhere. Another old jerk gone to his reward.”

Hughes slapped his shoulder. “Glenn, that’s terrible. You don’t celebrate a man’s death just because you don’t like his politics.”

“Ye do in my old neighborhood, Jillie, me sweet lass. Yes, indeedy, ye do.”

Pace’s phone rang. He grabbed the receiver before the first tone died.

It was Con Phillips at the FAA. Pace asked him if there were any airworthiness directives on the 811 fleet—notices to aircraft operators when the FAA or the manufacturer believes something on a particular model needs to be examined for trouble.

“I checked on it last thing yesterday afternoon,” Phillips replied. “We have no record of any ADs on the 811.”