Mark Gilleo - Sweat

“Jake, my friend. I knew you would be stopping by today,” Al said before his visitor got too close.

Jake looked in the same direction that Al stared, the Kennedy Center and the Whitehurst Freeway dominating the skyline, the morning sun bouncing off the water in the distance. Eight-man sculling teams raced down the edge of Roosevelt Island, oars cutting through the water in perfect unison.

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that, Al?”

“Your problem hit the front page. Go grab those papers from the chair in the living room, if you don’t mind,” Al asked still staring off into the distance.

Jake tried to force a smile as he walked up the sloped dirt. The living room…

Jake dropped the papers on the concrete wall next to Al, flopped his butt down, and hung his feet over the edge, shoes still on. Al shuffled through the first paper on the top of the stack.

Jake reached into his backpack and pulled out a bag. “I brought you lunch, if you want it. An eight-inch sub with everything… an apple, a banana, and some milk.”

“Sounds very nutritious. You’ll make a great mom someday.”

“If you don’t want it, just say so. I’ll eat it myself.”

Al reached for the bag and put it on the other side of his body. “I’ll make sure it goes to someone who can use it.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jake said.

Al flipped through pages like a speed-reader on cocaine. Jake noticed the variety of the day’s newspapers. The stack was thick. Everything from the Wall Street Journal to Barron’s to the Financial Times . Al peeled off page after page and handed them to Jake.

“Take a look at the articles on the pages I dog-eared. Tell me what you see.”

Jake opened the first page, started to fidget, and moved to the next paper. The same photo, taken a few frames later than the first.

Jake looked at Al. “I know all about the photo. The story ran on the news last night.”

Al gave Jake a serious look, his mouth closed, his eyes focused. “This isn’t what I would classify as a positive development.”

Jake looked at the picture of his father and Senator Day, shaking hands with Lee Chang. All three men were identified in the photo caption.

“I’m not sure exactly, but there is something you need to know. You can’t really see this clearly, but on TV they had a closer picture. That’s the big Asian guy I think I saw the night Marilyn was killed.”

“Are you sure it was him?”

“Not one hundred percent, but sure enough that if I see him again I’m going to be running in the opposite direction before I start asking questions.”

Al fell into a deep silence, all of the life, the craziness, gone from his personality. He was somewhere else, and Jake waited for him to return.

“Senator Day,” Al said with open disdain.

“What about him?”

“It’s not good, Jake.”

“I had dinner with Senator Day a month ago. He was harmless. Arrogant and full of hot air, but harmless.”

“You had dinner with Senator Day? The senator from Massachusetts?”

“Yes. It was my first day working at my father’s office. I guess he was trying to impress me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Jake.”

“What, that my father was trying to impress me?”

“No, that you had dinner with the senator. Just as I was beginning to like you, I find out you’ve been sharing your table with vermin.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’ll tell you about the harmless Senator Day,” Al hissed, pausing slightly before continuing. “The plane that killed my wife and son, Egyptian Air Flight 990, took off from New York at 1:20 a.m. on October 31, 1999. The plane flew for thirty-one minutes and vanished from radar sixty miles south of Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. As usual, there was a large-scale investigation headed up by the NTSB, the FAA…the usual suspects. Lack of physical evidence made determining the cause of the crash difficult. The debris of the 747 was scattered across some fifty square miles of ocean. Two hundred and seventeen lives reduced to pieces of foam, plastic, and seat cushions bobbing on the water,” Al said, fading out, his voice cracking.

“Of course, given my former employer, I was able to lean on a few people and get a little more information than the general public could get. There were complications with the investigation. The little black boxes were eventually retrieved via a robotic arm on an unmanned mini-sub. Contrary to popular belief, information from the data recorders can be hit-or-miss, and in some cases the black boxes are worthless. In the crash of Egyptian Flight 990, the data was too good. All evidence pointed to a plane that was mechanically sound. There was no history of failed hydraulics or engine problems, and a recent scheduled maintenance showed a perfectly fit aircraft.

“The crux of the crash was the voice recordings from the cockpit, and it wasn’t until these were studied that real problems began. Two minutes of tape from some crazy-ass, co-pilot-in-training quoting the Koran and rambling on about Allah. There were all kinds of procedural inconsistencies, starting with the pilot leaving the co-pilot behind the controls in the first hour of flight. When the plane started dipping erratically, the pilot fought his way back to the cockpit and tried to regain control of the aircraft, battling the structural limitations of the airplane and the physics of an aircraft in a steep dive. All the evidence needed for the investigation was there, on the tape, in words.”

Jake looked at Al as he continued to tell the story, tears rolling down his cheeks, his voice quivering.

“Well the Egyptians start screaming foul, claiming the cockpit recordings were inconclusive and that by portraying the Egyptian Air pilots as kamikaze, suicidal maniacs, it would damage the mainstay of their economy—tourism. Given the political nature of the claims, a special Senate inquiry team was formed to gather additional, impartial information from a clusterfuck of agencies and individuals. The FBI Anti-Terrorist Task Force, the FAA, NTSB, the Airlines Pilot associations, Boeing, Airbus. Anyone and everyone who knew anything about aircraft, or the two million parts that go into one, was paraded through the Capitol in front of the Senate inquiry.”

“I think I see where this is heading.”

“I guess you can. The inquiry team was headed by one ‘harmless’ senator from Massachusetts. The plane had crashed in his backyard, and with that individual piece of luck, Senator Day was nominated as the Senate point man for the investigation. The whole affair was anything but a picnic. Surviving family members were going toe-to-toe with the airplane manufacturers, the airlines, and the Egyptian government. Senator Day, avoiding decision and repercussions that could come from making the wrong one, simply drowned the proceedings with testimony, knowing the longer he could stall the proceeding, the less public interest there would be. Twenty months later, with the Egyptian government still protesting loudly, the official initial finding of the NTSB was thrown out in favor of a much more politically-correct finding of ‘inconclusive.’ I’m sure Senator Day got honorary Egyptian citizenship and a free lifetime pass to the Pyramids.”

“I’m sorry, Al.”

“Yeah. Everyone is sorry,” Al responded with half the volume in his voice. “You know, I was able to pull a few strings and listen to an unedited version of the cockpit recording. The man plunged the plane into the ocean, pure and simple. And Senator Day sold out the Americans onboard that flight to appease the Egyptians.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“Senator Day? No, never met him face-to-face. He was too much of a coward.”