He threw up his splayed hands and yelled, ‘NTSB!’ but didn’t slow down until he dropped to his knees beside the still-twitching body of the airport cop, who’d done everything right except imagine for even one second that any man would be crazy enough to run straight down the muzzle of his service revolver.
Tom heard running footsteps coming at him from all sides, and turned to hold up his ID, but before he could get there, the first cop to reach him swung his gun into his face, and then what felt like the defensive line of the Green Bay Packers jumped on top of him, all eager to get a little piece before they could remember they were supposed to be the good guys.
At the bottom of the pile – squashed and pummelled – Tom was very faintly aware that he still felt rescued.
*
They didn’t want to let him go, of course. A cop was dead, a car stolen, an engineer beaten up, and a foul-mouthed check-in girl’s nail broken.
Tom called down his federal credentials, his ongoing investigation, his LA driver’s licence and, finally, swore on the life of his mother that he would return to answer questions within twenty-four hours. How were they to know she was already dead?
Once Halo, Lucia and a telephonically confused Pete LaBello managed to convince them of various aspects of the truth, the airport cops took a brief preliminary statement, withheld his driver’s licence, and reluctantly released him just as the DC flight finished boarding.
They didn’t go so far as to apologize, but one of them gave him the number of his dentist, who’d apparently done a great job when his own tooth got broken ‘in the line of duty’, as he put it. In the line of a fucking rent-a-cop steel toe-cap, Tom thought, but, for once, managed not to say.
Then the American Airlines flight attendants were wary of letting him board because of the blood that kept dripping from his mouth onto his shirt, forcing Tom to swallow it in a pretence that it had stopped, then buy a fresh T-shirt from the gift shop with ‘Only in LA’ across the front, before they warily stood aside and let him follow Lucia onto what he was unsurprised to see was a 737.
Seat 15C was on the aisle. Lucia was in 15D. Tom noted automatically that they were five rows back from the exit door over the wing. He sat down bare inches above what he could now only hope was the answer to every question he’d ever asked about fake fan discs, and fastened his seatbelt.
41
TOM READ THE safety card assiduously as they taxied. He glanced at Lucia and saw the tension in her. He could have given her chapter and verse on the odds of survival that the seating plan, aircraft type and destination gave them in the event of a crash on take-off or landing, but instead he double-checked his seatbelt, then simply reached his hand across the aisle to hold hers as the thrust pressed them back in their seats and they left LA behind.
For a moment he thought about holding her sister’s hand, but Lucia’s was warm and gripped his firmly in return.
As soon as the seatbelt sign went off, Tom got on his knees and yanked his life preserver from under his seat. A passing flight attendant stopped and asked if she could help him, but Tom held up his ID and told her he was doing random safety checks. Then he asked for a Jack Daniel’s for him and a Coke for Lucia. ‘With rum in it,’ she said, and gave him a small smile.
‘While you’re on duty?’ the attendant said pointedly.
‘Make it a double,’ Tom shot back, and she withdrew.
‘Why do you have to piss everybody off?’ Lucia wondered.
‘I don’t. They piss me off.’
The elderly woman in 15B tutted but Tom ignored her.
The file was there. Tom pulled it out with hands that shook. He glanced up and Lucia was gazing at him with bright, questioning eyes. He nodded, hoping his excitement wasn’t misplaced.
He sat down and stared at the file. Dull brown manila with old-fashioned pink string fastenings, not as thick as he’d hoped, but still.
He opened it and rifled through the contents. As he did so, the low-grade pessimism that had dogged him for months lifted and he felt his heart bump with excitement.
It didn’t take a code-breaker to know what he was looking at.
The first document was an import manifest detailing the importation of twenty CFM56 fan discs, which had landed at San Pedro four years earlier, from an engineering firm in São Paolo, Brazil. The batch number was 501 and Tom grinned.
The next was a bill of lading releasing possession of said fan discs; this was a carbon copy. The company taking possession of the shipment was printed neatly, Avia Freight, and the receiving signature read ‘B. Allway’.
Jesus. Bruce Allway: he of the new-smelling carpet and the actress-slash-clerk who got her kicks by baiting the waiting room with porn. Tom could hardly believe the arrogance of the man in signing for the parts himself, not even trying to disguise his involvement behind a front-man. Whether Avia were aware of it or not, Allway’s position with the company gave him the perfect cover to match stolen paperwork to fake parts and sell them on as genuine to a range of carriers across the USA.
A dart of self-anger jabbed him, but he discarded it fast. His mind rapidly replaying their encounter, he couldn’t think of anything he might have missed, anything he should have seen to let him know that Allway was involved. The man had been open with him, had handed him the documentation he’d requested with a smile and a handshake.
Tom shook his head at the sheer bravado and flipped to the next document.
It was the purchase record of a single fan disc to American Airlines within months of its importation. Attached to that was the familiar 8130-3 ‘birth certificate’, and also the ‘Serviceable’ tag showing the date the 501 fan disc had been installed.
Tom was slightly disappointed that there was a paper trail for only a single part in a single plane; he’d hoped for hundreds of documents – enough to ground dozens of specific aircraft. But technically he knew that what he held in his hands was all they needed to convict Allway, at the very least. So what if the work hadn’t been done for them? They could subpoena Allway’s records, follow the paper trail themselves. And with a charge of mass murder hanging over him, Tom was sure Allway could be made to sing like Doris Day. The arrests wouldn’t stop with him: they’d be sure to catch other fish in their net. Bigger fish.
They would. The NTSB. Not him any more. But, still …
Tom felt lighter. The weight of not knowing lifted from him and a buzz of excitement filled him instead. The thought of laying this file on Pete LaBello’s desk, of watching his eyes as he absorbed and understood the import of the information, the knowledge that he’d succeeded instead of failed, the bittersweet pang that Lenny Munro, Pam and her team had died trying to prove something that had indeed been provable all along: they’d all been vindicated now he’d finally got that proof.
He looked round and found Lucia watching him.
‘It’s all here,’ he said, in a rush of dizzy relief.
She smiled at him and reached for his hand. He took it. Finally he had someone to celebrate with. The fact that it was Lucia, and that she was so pleased for him even after all the shit he’d put her through, made him feel drunk with happiness. He got up and knelt in the aisle beside her seat like a man begging forgiveness, which he absolutely was.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, shocked at the ease with which it emerged from his mouth.
She half smiled, half frowned in confusion. ‘What for?’
‘Being a jerk.’
The frown disappeared and the smile widened. He raised his brows in mock-surprise. ‘No argument?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘For once we’re in complete agreement.’
They laughed and he winced at the pain in his mouth. The frown returned and she touched his lip with the tip of one finger. ‘Kiss it better,’ she said.
It was not a question so he let her kiss it better until the attendant, who already didn’t like him, banged his feet with the drinks cart.
Back in his seat, Tom knocked back his whiskey and felt his body relaxing in a way it hadn’t for months. He felt like a leaf that had been clinging to a branch in a storm, finally letting go and enjoying being carried by the wind instead of fighting it. He wondered how the hell he’d hung on for so long against such ridiculous odds. If he had to do it all again, he thought, he couldn’t. He’d given it everything he had to give. Now he was empty, but in a good way.
He glanced at his watch. Two hours to DC. Even now he allowed himself to daydream about getting his job back. He didn’t want to have to ask for it; in his head he heard Pete – no, not Pete: Pete was okay – he heard the whole fucking board begging him to withdraw his resignation, reinstating him to air crashes. Promoting him? Nah, that was unlikely, even in Fantasyland. He’d be happy to be back where he’d been a year ago, but had been too dumb to appreciate.
He thought about ringing for another drink, but was too tired. He glanced across at Lucia: she was already asleep. A slow, sensuous wave of exhaustion engulfed him and dragged him willingly into its depths.
*
The woman in 15B woke him twenty-five minutes later because she needed the toilet but even that couldn’t defuse Tom’s sense of well-being. He let the woman out, then sat down, confident that he’d sleep again when she returned. In the meantime, he reopened the file, thrilling to its very existence.
He studied every document anew, then flicked over the last page and frowned.
He’d missed something. An envelope was tucked into a pocket inside the back cover. It was the same manila colour as the file, which was no doubt why he’d missed it previously. Now he slid it free and opened it.
Inside were three Polaroid photographs. Tom squinted, getting his bearings on the first, then stopped breathing. The photo was of Niño Alvarez. Niño Alvarez who had installed what Tom now knew for sure was a fake fan disc in the Pride of Maine. He recognized the man’s new Timberland boots, but Niño’s mother wouldn’t have been able to identify him in any other way. He might have been shot in the head, but it was hard to tell; what wasn’t hard to tell was that he was dead, and lying on what looked like pine needles.
