Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Actually, I was thinking more of a million and a half.”

“Still not enough. But, hell, you don’t need me. I’m the one who told you there was no story in the SDs and incident reports.”

“That’s right. You’re fired.”

“Good. Maybe I can get tomorrow off.”

“Hey, Con, before you go, you heard anything about what’s in the black boxes?”

“Why would the NTSB tell me?”

“Gossip.”

“Not a thing, really.”

“Is that straight?”

“Would I lie to you? If I did, couldn’t you tell? You’re the one with the crystal ball.”

There still was no answer at Conklin’s home at 1:30. The after-hours number at the NTSB was answered by a man who said Conklin was at work but was not taking calls.

Pace vowed the sun wouldn’t set on the day until he confronted Eddie and talked to him. Since the NTSB was transcribing the cockpit voice tapes, getting to him now was even more critical than in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Tape enhancement was Conklin’s specialty.

Next, Pace called Glenn Brennan, who was at Dulles, and asked if Glenn could cover for him at the 6:30 NTSB briefing. He wouldn’t make it if it took him all day to find Conklin.

“No problem, Kemo Sabe,” Brennan answered.

“I once heard from somebody that Kemo Sabe means ‘horse’s ass,’” Pace said.

“I heard that, too,” Brennan replied with a laugh.

Pace first went to the bookstore across the street from the office and bought a couple of magazines. Then he stopped at his favorite deli on G Street, where he got a gigantic ham-and-Swiss on rye, side of slaw, and Coke to go. With his lunch and his reading in hand, he took a cab to the L’Enfant Plaza East offices of the NTSB. He found a comfortable spot in the sun and prepared to stake out the place for the rest of the day, if necessary.

It was a gamble. If Conklin had driven his car, he could get to the garage and leave without Pace seeing him. But it was another nice spring day, and the technician lived only about a mile away, on Capitol Hill. Pace guessed he had walked to work and would leave by the front door to walk home.

It was a good guess but a long wait.

It was nearly four o’clock when Conklin emerged, scanning the street for a taxi. So intently was he engrossed in his own thoughts that he walked within three feet of Pace without seeing him. For his part, Pace had become involved in an article in Omni , and if he hadn’t heard someone walk past, he would have missed his friend.

“Hey, Eddie, wait up.”

Pace gathered his trash and belongings, and caught up with the technician. Conklin looked tired.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, buddy,” Pace apologized, putting his lunch trash down while he struggled into his coat. He handed the magazines to Conklin. “Hold these a minute. Let me put myself back together.”

Conklin looked dumbfounded. “How long’ve you been out here?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Two hours, I guess.”

“Waiting for me?”

“Yeah. I’ve been calling your place at all hours without reaching you. I figure you’ve been working your butt off. I knew I couldn’t get close to you inside without an appointment. So I thought I’d wait ’til you were off and buy you a beer.”

“You don’t buy me a beer, and I don’t buy your story,” Conklin said with a hint of a grin turning up the left side of his mouth. “You haven’t reached me because I didn’t want you to, or any other media, either. I’ve been staying with a friend up near Dupont Circle.”

“Lady?”

“Is that your business?”

“Okay, if you don’t want me to buy you a beer, you buy me a beer, or we’ll go Dutch. Come on, Eddie, give me a break. I need to talk to you about the Sexton.”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it. That’s why I’m not staying at home. I didn’t want to have to go through this every fifteen minutes. There’s not much I can tell you anyhow. The material from the flight data recorder is still being analyzed. We’re pulling transcripts from the cockpit voice recorder, but I don’t know when that process will be completed.”

“Shit. I need to get a better handle on what’s on those tapes. There must have been some pretty dramatic stuff. A lot of confusion. Does that jibe with what you know?”

“Yeah, generally, although there’s much more.”

“Like what?”

“You leech.” Conklin strode off down the sidewalk, then turned around to face Pace, who had followed him. “You can hear them dying, for chrissake! I’m not going into details. The tapes are horrible. They’re terrible. It’s enough to make you sick. A couple of guys who heard them did puke, as a matter of fact. You want something for a story? There, use that. It’s all true. But that’s it. No more. I know we’re friends, but no more. If you value our friendship, you won’t ask.”

“I’m sorry, Eddie. I have to ask. It’s my job, damn it. Why do I have to explain that to everybody today?”

Conklin nodded in reluctant acceptance of that explanation.

He caught the eye of a cabbie on the other side of the street, and the two sprinted through traffic as the driver pulled to the curb. “You going back to the paper?” Conklin asked Pace, who nodded. Conklin gave the driver his temporary Dupont Circle address and asked him to go there by way of the Chronicle Building. As the cab pulled out into traffic, Conklin sat back heavily in the seat.

“I’m sorry I took your head off, Steve. The last three days seem like forever, and I’m tired. I also had an old friend from college on that plane. This would be hard enough work anyhow, but it’s being personal and all makes it that much tougher.”

“Christ, I’m sorry, Eddie. There’s a lot of that going around.”

“What do you mean?”

Pace told him about Jonathan McGovern.

“Good Lord.” Conklin shook his head sadly. “Hey, I know Kathy McGovern, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” Pace said. “I was dating her when you and I first met.”

“And you’re still together? That sounds serious.”

“Getting back together is a better way to put it. Maybe. It’s my idea. I don’t know how she feels about it yet.”

Conklin sighed heavily. “Listen,” he said, “you can call me in a few days, maybe a week, when the heat’s off. Maybe I’ll be able to tell you more. You can use the stuff I told you back at the office, but if you do, no names, huh?”

Pace nodded. The rest of the ride passed in silence.

By the time Pace got back to the office, he was running right up against his first deadline, but he was able to base a story on the material from Conklin, quoting him only as a source with knowledge of the investigation, a descriptive broad enough to cover Conklin. Glenn, as promised, had covered the Lund briefing and filed a memo to Pace’s basket. Steve read it with a sense of relief. There was nothing new, but he pumped a few quotes from the NTSB official into his story to flesh it out and gave Glenn a credit line at the end.

But on his way home, shortly before nine, Schaeffer stopped at Pace’s desk. “So, you finally tracked down your friend, huh?”

“I staked out the building this afternoon,” Pace said, continuing to type. “Actually, I don’t know if it was worth the time. The quotes are good, but they don’t tell us much.”

“Well, you’re chipping away at it. That’s the way these things go. You only get lucky in detective and spy novels. In real life, it takes time and a lot of trips down blind alleys.”

Pace wished he felt that confident.

Julia Hershowitz, the Sunday national editor, finished with Pace’s copy shortly before 9:30 and gave him a thumbs-up sign.