Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Steve Pace sat at his desk and drummed his fingers against the side of the telephone. He held the receiver to his left ear, on hold, waiting for Howard Comchech to pick up on the other end. Since he hadn’t had the chance to contact either Comchech or Teller the night before, Pace called them at Hangar 3. He wondered if either would meet him in person if he drove to Dulles.

His nerves were rubbed raw. He’d had the sense the night before that Martin Lanier not only doubted his story about the telephone messages and the blue Ford van but was beginning to doubt his sanity as well. When the cop left his apartment, he tried again to reach Kathy, but even at 1:00 A.M. there was no answer. He slept fitfully and awoke unrested. Before he even started coffee, he called her. And again there was no answer.

He finally reached her at the office at 10:30. She said she spent the night at the Greens’. She was cool, distant. Nonetheless, he told her about the new message on his answering machine.

“What am I supposed to do about it?” she asked.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to stay with Hugh and Gretchen a while.”

“Oh, really? You think that would stop someone trying to reach me? They do know where I work. I could be shot on the street, run down by a car—”

“Stop it!” he demanded through clenched teeth. “This isn’t funny.”

“And I’m not making a joke of it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where I am, whether I’m with you, or at home, or with the Greens. If they want me, they can get to me. That’s what I was trying to tell you the other night. You didn’t understand then and you don’t understand now.”

Pace played the conversation back in his mind. She was right, of course. And he didn’t know how to deal with that.

“This is Howard Comchech.”

The voice brought Pace back. “Mr. Comchech, thanks for coming to the phone. I’d like to talk to you. If I drive out to Dulles this afternoon, would you have a few minutes?”

“What for?” the investigator asked. “I’m not authorized to say anything.”

“Yes, sir, I know,” Pace said. “I wanted to talk about Mark Antravanian.”

“Mark? Tragedy. Just a tragedy. I simply don’t understand what he was doing out at that hour of the night.”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Pace said.

“Well, then, there isn’t anything I can help you with. I don’t know the answer.”

“When did you first hear he was missing?” Pace thought he’d better get what interview he could by phone.

“I didn’t know he was missing at all,” Comchech said. “When we got together, uh, now I don’t recall what day it was exactly, but it turned out to be the day Mark was killed, I mean, it was the morning… I mean, he died, as I understand it, sometime after midnight, and this would be daybreak of that same day…”

“Sunday, April twentieth,” Pace suggested.

“Ah, yes, it was a Sunday, because one of my colleagues, William Teller, was going to church before he joined us, to early service so he wouldn’t put us to any trouble by being late to get to the task at hand. At any rate, when Bill arrived, we noticed Mark wasn’t there. Bill asked Elliott about him, and Elliott said he thought Mark was ill. When we found out later that he had been killed in a car accident, Bill suggested maybe Mark had been trying to get to a doctor or a hospital in the middle of the night. I don’t know any more about it.”

“Did Elliott Parkhall ever say anything more to you about Mark?”

“Not really, except after his body was identified, Elliott said what all of us felt—that it was a terrible tragedy and a horrible waste. Mark was a very decent man.”

“Mr. Comchech, when was the first time you looked at the starboard engine of the Sexton?” Pace asked.

“Well, let me recollect,” the investigator said. “It was early in the morning on the day after the crash.”

“Had any of you looked at the engine the day before, the actual day of the crash?”

“Well, of course, you know, it wasn’t precisely a crash, because the aircraft apparently never got off the ground—”

“The day of the accident, then?”

“No, not that I know of,” Comchech said. “Bill and I didn’t get there until very late Thursday night. We didn’t think we’d be of much use at that hour so we turned in so we could be ready and alert the next day.”

“How about Elliott and Mark?”

“I think they both got to the scene shortly after the accident,” Comchech said.

Pace was puzzled. “Mark worked for McDonnell Douglas in California,” he recalled. “How could he get to Dulles that fast?”

“He was on the East Coast on business, as I recall,” Comchech said. “In Boston or New York or some such. He hopped a shuttle.”

Pace’s heart was pounding hard. “So Mark and Elliott both got to Dulles in time to see the engine on Thursday?”

“Oh, yes,” Comchech said. “In fact, Bill’s right here. Let me put him on the line. I’m certain he can confirm that.”

Pace forced himself to be calm, and he quizzed Teller as closely as he’d questioned Comchech. Their stories matched exactly.

Both were able to place Parkhall and Antravanian at Dulles on Thursday. And Pace was more certain than ever: Parkhall had done something that defied imagining. Antravanian found out about it. And Antravanian paid for that knowledge with his life.

But understanding that was a long way from proving it.

“There is absolutely no question about it, G.T. That’s why I tried to reach you last night. It couldn’t have happened any better for us.”

Harold Kingsley Marshall was pacing at high speed behind his desk, his excitement too high to contain. On the other end of the private line, in Youngstown, George Thomas Greenwood was trying to calm him down enough to get the story straight.

“You’re talking to a brain marinated in fine brandy last night, and you’re going to have to humor me. Don’t jump around. Tell me, detail by detail, from the beginning.”

“Okay,” Marshall agreed. “I got a call last night about eight. It was from a seductive young thing whose name you don’t need to know. She’s one of my legislative assistants, and she’s seriously dating a Chronicle reporter—or maybe a photographer, I don’t know—named, ah, Hogan, I think it is. It doesn’t matter.”

“Right, Harold,” Greenwood said impatiently. “Get on with it.”

“This LA is in love with the newsie, but she’s very loyal to me. Ever since the accident, she’s been feeding me intelligence that crosses her pillow about the Chronicle’s plans. I didn’t ask her to do that. I don’t encourage people to sleep around to gather gossip.”

“I understand, Harold. What did she tell you?”

“Steven Pace was busted off his beat. She didn’t know why, but he’s not only off the Sexton story, he’s off the aviation beat, demoted to general assignment.”

“Who’s been assigned to aviation?”

“I don’t know. It’s not important. Whoever it is doesn’t have any ego invested in the Sexton story and isn’t likely to pursue anything that isn’t fed to him by the NTSB. That’s the way the Chronicle brass wants it.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so, G.T. That’s absolutely so. We are home scot-free.”

Steve Pace’s new hours were 10:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M., more or less. Any assignment could roust him earlier or keep him later. But there was nothing special for him early his first day on general assignment, and that was fine because his insides were tied in knots so tight it was doubtful he could have concentrated on a story.